m Way o 



ARLES BAYARD MITCHELL 



IBiiSiliiliiftUi.. ,:■ 




Qass 1 5 V 4 C ) I 

Book MmIi 

Copyright }J° 



CDEmiGHT DEPOSIT 



THE WAY OF A MAN 



The Way of a Man 



By 
Charles Bayard Mitchell, D.D.,LL.D. 



Cmmttmttr 
Jennings and Graham 

Eaton and Mains 



"pKI^ 



copyright, 1912, by 
Jennings and Graham 






Contents 

I. A Man's Style, - - 7 

II. A Man's Body, - - 22 

III. A Man's Mind, - - 40 

IV. A Man's Heart, - - 55 
V. A Man's Soul, - - - 67 

VI. A Man's Amusement - 81 

VII. A Man's Work - - 99 

VIII. A Man's Temptation - 115 

IX. A Man's Vote, - - 135 

X. A Man's Maiden, - - 153 

XI. A Man's Wife, - - 165 

XII. A Man's Life, - - 184 

XIII. A Man's Religion, - 199 

XIV. A Man's Eternity, - - 215 

[5] 



A Man's Style 

I DO not wonder that those disciples of 
Jesus wondered what sort of a man was He, 
who, by His commanding voice, could still 
the troubled waves. 

Surely a new style of man had come to 
Galilee who could rebuke the winds and the 
sea and command their obedience. No 
other such man has ever walked on water 
as on solid ground. He was unique — a 
man apart from all others. And yet every 
man is unique. No two are alike. Each 
has his own style. I heard a young man 
say of another young fellow, "I do n't like 
his style.'' I overheard a merchant explain 
to a friend that he had turned away a 
certain applicant for a situation because 
he did not like his style. We all under- 
stand what that word ''style" means in 
this connection, better than we can define 
it. Style must include all the outward 

[7] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

appearance, which is characteristic of the 
man. It includes his mode of speech, dress, 
gait, his manner of action. It is the general 
impression his personality makes on those 
who meet him. If one's style is in any way 
related to his success, we may well take a 
little time to consider it. 

At first blush one may say: ^^I am what 
I am, and there is no helping it. People 
can like me or not; I can not help it and 
do not care. God made me and I am not 
responsible.'' Now there are two mistakes 
in that last short statement. God did not 
make you, and you do care. It is true God 
gives us our being, but we build our own 
character. God gives us the raw materials, 
and we do the rest. We blame God for 
much of which He is innocent. He is not 
responsible for what we make out of our- 
selves. He is responsible that we are. We 
are responsible for what we are. And then 
you do care what impression you make 
upon your fellows. You are not wholly 
lost to pride. I have seen a colored life- 
prisoner work more rapidly and dexterously 

[8] 



A MAN'S STYLE 

because he saw me looking on, and he 
wanted me to think well of his skill and 
swiftness. We are all building our own 
life, and want others to think well of our 
output. 

A man's style depends upon several 
things. His clothing is a part of his style, 
for there is revelation of character in one's 
very attire. Sometimes so small a thing 
as a bit of jewelry or a necktie will tell 
more than we ever suspected. It is but 
the recognition of the influence which 
honesty ought to have in the control of a 
life, to say that we should dress our bodies 
according to our means. 

In this matter, honesty is involved. 
Many a man proclaims his dishonesty in 
his clothes. He is wearing garments which 
all may know he is not able to pay for; that 
he dresses far beyond his station in life. 
He seeks to appear what he is not. His 
very coat may proclaim him a liar and a 
thief. Not only should we clothe our- 
selves according to our ability, but accord- 
ing to our age. Garments, appropriate to 

[9] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

youth, when worn by age, proclaim the 
wearer a fool. Old men, tricked up of the 
devil to look young, deceive no one, and 
only proclaim aloud that they are both 
vain and weak. 

It goes also without saying that we are 
to be clothed according to our work, and 
that when one appears in his best clothes 
to perform his soiling work, he is disclosing 
both his improvidence and vanity. 

I was not surprised to hear of the sad 
outcome of a marriage I once solemnized, 
because the young groom had no more self- 
respect nor regard for his little bride than 
to come to his wedding in soiled garments 
and dirty hands. He had better clothes, 
but remarked: ^'What difference does it 
make? You are married just the same, 
and I do not care how I look." 

A judge once thought an Irish witness 
was insolent who replied, when the judge 
reproved him for coming into court in his 
soiled working clothes, ''I am as well 
dressed as your honor." But the witness 
was right, and the judge saw it, when Pat 

[10] 



A MAN'S STYLE 

added, ''You have on your working clothes, 
and so have I.'' 

I have said enough, I am sure, to make 
clear what I mean when I say that char- 
acter is disclosed in our attire. 

A man's voice is part of his style. 
Each voice has its own peculiar timber. 
Character speaks in the tones of the voice. 
We form our opinion of those with whom 
we talk over the telephone, even though 
we may never have seen them. The voice 
is one of the surest indications of culture, 
or the lack of it. 

I remember once in a hotel elevator 
hearing one of the most harsh and raucous 
voices I ever heard coming from a human 
throat. It suggested coarseness and vul- 
srarity in every tone. I turned to see who 
was talking, and was not surprised to learn 
that the voice was that of the then cham- 
pion prize-fighter of the world. 

On another occasion, one morning in a 
hotel dining room, I heard away across the 
room the harsh and profane voice of a 
man speaking to his waiter. I turned to 

[11] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

discover that the man speaking was the 
then notorious infidel-lecturer who was 
advertised to speak in the city that night. 

I am told that the blind judge character 
by the voices of those with whom they 
converse. While it is true that each voice 
is distinct from other voices, having a 
quality all its own, it is equally true that 
one may cultivate a pleasing voice by 
growing an attractive and genial spirit. 

It is also true that one's language is a 
part of one's style. Speech is as tell-tale 
as dress or voice. We all make mistakes 
in the use even of our mother-tongue; but 
there are certain bold and apparent errors 
of speech which betoken ignorance. Dia- 
monds and velvets have no power to pro- 
claim a woman to be a lady of refinement 
when she speaks of "having saw" anything. 
There are people who lavish money and 
time on their personal appearance, hoping 
thereby to pass for people of importance, 
who betray by their speech that they are 
essentially ignorant, if not positively vulgar. 

I once was attracted to a handsome old 
[12] 



A MAN'S STYLE 

couple, richly clad, seated at a hotel table 
near my own. I was considering who they 
might be; for surely, I thought, he is some 
man of note. I lost all curiosity concerning 
them when I overheard the man say to 
the woman: ^^Them biled potatoes is fine. 
Have some.'' One may spend thousands 
of dollars in the effort to appear worthy of 
the regard of the cultured and refined, by 
rich apparel and costly mansion, who 
betrays his utter ignorance and vulgarity 
as soon as he opens his mouth to speak. 
There are women who would feel disgraced 
if seen in a gown of last year's style, whose 
speech is marked by error and slang. A 
man may be faultlessly attired and in 
possession of millions, and yet by the 
coarseness of his language publish his 
inferiority. A United States senator from 
a Western State once said to a gentleman 
who had been expressing his regret that 
the senator had not been present at a 
gathering the night before, and that, if it 
had been known that he was slightly in- 
disposed and stayed away on that account, 

[13] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

he could have had a carriage sent for him, 
spoke up and said, "If I had knowed I 
could have rode, I would have went/' 

The way a man has of meeting strangers 
or friends, betrays his style. You can 
rightly judge a man by the way he shakes 
hands. There is character in a handshake. 
You have met men who, when they have 
grasped you by the hand, have hooked you 
to their hearts. Let some man but lay his 
hand on your shoulder, or run his thumb 
through your button-hole, and you are 
his for time and eternity. A keen judge 
of human nature can judge a man at once 
and correctly by the way he comes in 
contact with his fellow-men. There is 
something in one's method of human ap- 
proach which either attracts or repels. It 
is difficult to explain just what it is, but we 
feel it, and we say, ''I like his style,'' or, 
"I do not like his style." 

I feel sure you will agree with me when 
I say that a man's style is affected by his 
self-respect. Ease of manner is due to 
courteous self-possession. There is such a 

[14] 



A MAN'S STYLE 

thing as a divine self-respect. Awkwardness 
is often due to self -depreciation. Diffidence 
is the result of self-discount. The world is 
apt to take one at his own self -valuation. 
Discount yourself, and so will others. Self- 
poise is a vital asset in life. A mean and 
low estimate of yourself may be due to 
your own superior knowledge of the subject. 
And that fact will then disclose itself in a 
deprecatory and apologetic manner. So 
likely is this to happen that I have known 
people, conscious of their own diffidence, 
who have boldly plunged to the opposite 
extreme, and have made the impression 
that they were haughty and proud. They 
were not. They were trembling while they 
lifted their heads so proudly. 

Self-confidence must not be confounded 
with self-conceit. Confidence in one's self 
is one of the fundamental qualities in the 
character of a lady or gentleman. La 
Rochefoucauld said: ''There is a kind of 
elevation which does not depend upon 
fortune. It is a certain air which distin- 
guishes us, and seems to destine us for 

[15] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

great things; it is the price we imperceptibly 
set on ourselves. By this quality we usurp 
the deference of other men; and it places 
us above them, more than birth, dignity, 
or even merit.'' 

Self-conceit is a different thing from 
self-reliance. The former is to be stifled; 
the latter to be encouraged in every life. 
Louis Kossuth spoke wisely when he said, 
"'Humility is the part of wisdom, and is 
most becoming in men; but let no one 
discourage self-reliance; it is the greatest 
quality of true manliness." 

He who has no self-confidence is uni- 
versally condemned. God pity the man 
who always gets his opinions from others, 
and never knows what position to take on 
any public question until he has read his 
morning paper. Your whole style will be 
affected by the degree of respect you have 
for yourself. 

A man's style is affected by his self- 
control. It depends largely on the grip he 
has on his own appetites and passions. 

The most important attribute of any 
[16] 



A MAN'S STYLE 

man, as a moral being, is the faculty of 
self-control. In the supremacy of self- 
control consists one of the perfections of the 
ideal man. Not to be impulsive, not to be 
spurred hither and thither by each desire 
that in turn comes uppermost; but to be 
self-contained, self-balanced, governed by 
the joint decision of the feelings in council 
assembled, before which every action shall 
have been fully debated and calmly de- 
termined — that it is which is the product of 
a moral education, worth more than all the 
diamonds which ever gleamed on royal tiara. 

And then, a kindly spirit will affect 
the style of a man. There is no rule like 
the "'Golden Rule'' for producing a gentle 
and kindly spirit. The secret of the pop- 
ularity of the world's best loved idols lies 
in the fact that they loved and helped their 
fellow-men. 

Lincoln will always be loved. Florence 
Nightingale will always be loved. Jesus 
will ever grip the hearts of humanity, be- 
cause He, and those most like Him, have 
lived for others, and not for self. 
2 [ 17 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

This kindly spirit of which I am now 
speaking avoids giving pain. A person of 
fine tact and fiber never sees personal de- 
formities and blemishes. A cripple said he 
could classify his friends as to their manner 
and breeding by drawing a line between 
those who asked him how it happened and 
those who made him forget his misfortune. 

If I know what a gentleman is, he is 
this: He is one free from arrogance and 
anything like self-assertion; he has con- 
sideration for the feelings of others; he is 
so secure in his own position that he is 
always unpretentious, feeling that he can 
not do an ungentlemanly act. He is as 
courteous and kind in manner to one man 
as to another. He regards no man as his 
inferior. 

The value of all this I have been saying 
appears in the light of the fact that a 
man's style determines the degree and 
character of his success in life. Good 
manners is not a weakness. It is a great 
strength. There is an indefinable power in 
good manners which unconsciously, irre- 

[18] 



A MAN'S STYLE 

sistibly, and instantaneously wins admira- 
tion. The pleasing address, the winning 
manner, immediately unlocks doors and 
opens hearts. 

The best passport to the best society 
which a man can have, next to a clean 
character, is the possession of fine manners. 
We can not overvalue appearance. We are 
judged by our looks. A wise merchant 
once said that if he were out of employ- 
ment, looking for a situation, and only had 
one dollar left, he would spend that dollar 
in improving his personal appearance. To 
look prosperous is half the battle. 

Samuel Johnson once said: "The dif- 
ference between a well-bred and an ill-bred 
man is this: One immediately attracts 
your liking, the other your aversion. You 
love one until you find reason to hate him; 
you hate the other until you find reason to 
love him.'' 

It is well known in business that there 
are men who repel by their manner even 
though they are known to be trustworthy. 
They are shunned whenever possible, while 

[19] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

audience is given to others with more agree- 
able personaHty. Let two men of equal 
ability apply for the same place, and the 
better mannered one will get the job. The 
man with a fine manner has a rich capital. 

The head of the greatest grocery firm 
in New York will confess that his great 
business grew because he was known as 
one who treated every one with equal 
courtesy and kindness. Bankers will tell 
you that nothing except downright honesty 
contributes more toward success in bank- 
ing than a pleasing style. 

I know two comparatively young men, 
who, occupying two of the finest banking 
situations in the two largest cities in this 
country, owe their fine prosperity to their 
possession of a style which is pleasing and 
captivating to an almost hypnotic extent. 

The president of the Chemical National 
Bank of New York once said: ''If I could 
command the speech of twenty nations, I 
would preach politeness in them all. It is 
the Aladdin's lamp of success. I do not 
speak idly in praise of politeness; for out 

[20] 



A MAN'S STYLE 

of the experience of fifty-six years in the 
banking business, it has been borne in upon 
me almost daily that courtesy is one of the 
prime factors in the building up of every 
career. It is the ' hall mark ' of the Christian 
gentleman and of the keen man of affairs." 

I close by saying that the true gentle- 
man is something more than a boor, 
veneered with the manners of society. 
The observance of social laws laid down in 
any ^'blue-book'' or ''red-book " can never 
make a true gentleman. But the observ- 
ance of the laws laid down in the Good 
Book will make the poorest and humblest 
become the noblest of earth's princes. 

For, after all, the true basis of good 
manners is good character. The true 
Christian is always the true gentleman. 
Judged by "Ladies^ Home Journal man- 
ners," Abraham Lincoln might be con- 
sidered quite uncouth and rude. But 
judged by the standards of true religion, 
he was the noblest gentleman who ever 
occupied the Presidential chair! The best 
style of man is God's style of man! 

[21] 



A Man's Body 

Jesus Christ held the human body in 
such high esteem that when He talked 
about it to His disciples, they thought He 
was speaking of the great temple on 
Mount Moriah. Jesus had just driven out 
the buyers and sellers from the temple. 
They had fled more from the indignation 
in His eyes than from the whip in His 
hands. The Jews wanted afterwards to 
know of Him by what right He drove out 
the traders from the temple, and what 
sign could He give to them that He had 
divine authority. It was then that He 
foretold the death and resurrection of His 
human body, referring to it as a temple. 
They quite naturally concluded that He 
referred to the temple building. But Jesus 
referred to His human body, which is a 
far finer thing than ever was reared by 
human hands. 

[22] 



A MAN'S BODY 

Even Solomon's temple or the temple of 
Diana at Ephesus was not to be compared 
in real grandeur to the temple of the hu- 
man soul. Jesus taught that the temples 
built by human hands would some day fall, 
never to rise again. But the temple of the 
soul, the human body, would rise again in 
a glorified form and exist forever. 

Every one of us is apt to make one of 
two mistakes about the human body. We 
may either underestimate or overestimate 
its value. 

There are several classes who under- 
estimate the value of the body. One class 
is composed of those who place all emphasis 
on the mental and spiritual. They all but 
despise the claims of the body. There are 
students who almost starve their bodies in 
order to give all their time to the cultivation 
of their minds. They violate all the law^s of 
health. They do not eat sufficient nourish- 
ing food. They take little, if any, exercise. 
They do not take enough sleep. They do 
not realize how important it is to have a 
sound body for a sound mind. Mind 

[23] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

being the all-important item in life, the 
poor body is neglected, and too often a 
useful career ends untimely, because the 
physical instrument of the mind has been 
treated so shabbily. 

Modern educators have awakened to 
this danger, and have provided in most 
schools and colleges for the proper physical 
training of the body. They force the 
physically inactive to take a certain amount 
of physical exercise. The health of the 
students is carefully guarded. They have 
learned the uselessness of an educated 
mind in a diseased and weakly body. 

The heathen devotee underestimates 
the value of the body. The first thing 
which strikes a traveler in heathen lands 
is the contempt poured upon the body by 
those who claim to be the most spiritually- 
minded. The holiest are supposed to be 
they who crucify all the bodily pleasures. 
They seem to think that a pleasurable 
physical sensation is a sin. They seem to 
think that sin lies somewhere in human 
flesh. So if they can hurt the flesh, they 

[ 24 ] 



A MAN'S BODY 

will crush the sin. They act on the theory 
that if they can reduce the pleasures of the 
body to the minimum, they will raise the 
pleasures of the soul to the maximum. The 
awful methods employed by the so-called 
holy men in heathen countries to torture 
their bodies, is evidence of the wrong con- 
ceptions held concerning the worth and 
dignity of their physical natures. 

Jesus places the highest honor on the 
body. To be surej He taught the superior 
value of the soul, and warned men against 
the danger of placing more honor on the 
body than upon the soul. He taught that 
the soul was of more value than all the 
world besides. But He never dropped a 
word which might lead one to cast any 
contempt upon the body, which is the 
temple of the Holy Ghost. In these modern 
days there has grown up a cult who are 
utterly opposed to Jesus Christ in His 
estimate of the human body. He taught 
them to honor it, care for it, and wisely 
conserve it. These modern idealists so 
completely despise the human body that 

[25] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

they declare it is to be regarded as nothing, 
having no reahty in fact; that the laws of 
health may be violated with impunity; that 
hygiene and sanitation are foolishness; that 
it matters not what is put into the stomach, 
even poison does not have power to hurt 
it. These people, in theory, claim that the 
human body is not worth considering. If 
it aches, pay no attention to it. If it grows 
sick and weak, deny the fact, and go on 
as if all the machinery was working per- 
fectly. When the warning bells of pain 
ring out, telling one that law is being 
violated, and that danger and death ensue, 
pay no attention to them. When the fire 
bells ring, insist there is no fire, and do not 
think of pouring on water. But such people 
are absurdly inconsistent. When their 
houses catch fire, they send for the fire 
company. When physical hunger is felt, 
they feast on the richest viands. They are 
ready to recognize the existence of pleas- 
urable sensations, but deny the existence 
of the painful. They take food for hunger 
and water for thirst, but refuse any physical 

[26] 



A MAN'S BODY 

remedy for pain. They deny the existence 
of the human body, and yet meet in great 
halls weekly and talk about nothing else 
than their sicknesses, and how they cured 
them without doctors and medicines. In 
contrast, Christians meet in prayer-meeting 
to pray and talk about spiritual things, 
even though they admit they have physical 
bodies. 

These people meet in their weekly 
gatherings and talk about nothing else than 
their diseases in a way that causes the 
refined and delicate to feel nausea; and yet 
they deny the physical and claim to believe 
only in the spiritual. Practically, they 
seem to think of nothing other than the 
very bodies which they deny, seeking in 
many ways to adorn it in stylish garments, 
feed it with toothsome viands, house it in 
costly mansions, and live only for the lust 
of the eye and the pride of life. 

They wear eye-glasses, patronize the 
dentist, and call in the surgeon and phy- 
sician in hours of real need and danger. 
They profess to despise the body, and yet 

[27] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

live as though it were the most important 
thing in the world. 

There is another class who wholly over- 
estimate the value of the human body. In 
this class are those college students who 
object to so much time being taken up in 
study which ought to be given to ath- 
letics. They go to college for its athletics. 

I asked recently a young boy, only 
twelve years of age, if he did not wish he 
was now in college. He replied: ^'No! I 
could n't get on anything, being only a 
kid.'' His idea in going to college is to 
^'get on something;" that is, be chosen for 
some athletic post on football or baseball 
team or boat crew. A friend of mine once 
said of a fine, athletic young fellow: ''Chan 
ought to go to college. He is the best all- 
round athlete I know." 

Even some colleges seem to put more 
accent on the physical than on the mental 
and moral. They advertise the physical 
side. Look at the advertisements in the 
magazines calling the attention of parents 
to schools for the young. There is gen- 
' [28] 



A MAN'S BODY 

erally a picture of boys in football clothing, 
or a scene in baseball, or a boy on horse- 
back, a girl at golf or on horseback, a crew 
rowing, a group of military youths on drill. 

The appeal is made to the eye on the 
score of some physical attraction possessed 
by the school. On most modern college 
campuses the most prominent building is 
the gymnasium. 

More than one university has a splendid 
gymnasium, but no chapel; a great place 
for the boys to show off their muscles, but 
no great convocation hall where the grad- 
uates on Commencement day can display 
their mental attainments. Modern educa- 
tional methods are putting too much money 
into the physical, and not enough into the 
mental and moral. In the reaction from 
an utter neglect of the student-body's 
health they have swung to the other ex- 
treme, and are putting too large a premium 
on physical prowess. 

Another class of persons who over- 
estimate the value of the body is the 
materialist, who may not be such when 

[29] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

considered on scientific and philosophic 
grounds; for pure materiaHsm has theo- 
retically vanished in the blaze of light 
which now reveals even the subtle and in- 
tangible nature of matter. 

The theoretical materialist is gone, never 
to return. But many who deny that they 
are materialists, live practically material- 
istic lives. I know folk w^ho claim to be 
Christians, and yet their whole lives run 
out along the material gratifications and 
pleasures of life. They profess to believe 
in the soul, but they really live only for 
the body. They are like the ''rich fool'' 
in Christ's parable. They talk to their 
souls, saying, ''Take thine ease; thou hast 
much goods laid up in store for many 
years,'' as if they could feed their souls 
with corn! They live to eat and drink and 
dress. They seek only the things which 
add pleasure to the body. Their lives are 
given to the pursuit of only those things 
which perish in the using. 

They are practical atheists and materi- 
alists. They live for the flesh. Take away 

[30] 



A MAN'S BODY 

from them the things which pander only 
to the fleshly sensibilities, and they are 
wholly bankrupt. When they die, their 
pauper souls go out into eternity as empty 
and useless as when they came into time. 
There is a right way to value the human 
body. It consists not in overestimating or 
undervaluing it. It consists in regarding 
the human body as the instrument of the 
^ mind. God has given to us the most per- 
fect physical instrument in the world. All 
human inventions and creations are clumsy 
compared with it. Each part is admirably 
adapted to some use of the occupant. 

The more we study the body, the more 
we are amazed at its marvelous adapta- 
bility to our uses. We are shut up in this 
temple of our body, and for all practical 
purposes we are confined in our flesh. 
We see out through our eyes and hear with 
our ears. Our physical senses are the 
avenues of communication by which we 
come in contact with the outside world. 
To the extent that these avenues are kept 
open and in good working order we are 

[31] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

able to do our work in the world and be of 
use to our fellows and ourselves. We can 
not be too careful of our tools. The work- 
man is a fool who needlessly destroys them. 
We need all our physical resources. We 
are fools if we willingly weaken or destroy 
our physical efficiency. We should know 
that the human body requires intelligent 
care. For ages men have been studying it, 
and we are now coming to know more than 
ever before concerning its nature and 
capacity. 

There is nothing more wonderful in all 
our modern science than the secrets which 
modern medical and surgical research have 
disclosed. The intelligent study of the 
body has discovered numerous remedies for 
its ills, and the average age of man is being 
greatly lengthened. Old-time diseases are 
becoming obsolete. Epidemics and plagues 
are all but impossible in civilized lands. 
Modern methods of sanitation are making 
it possible for vast multitudes to dwell in 
congested cities and enjoy better health 
than those who live in the country. Great 

[32] 



A MAN'S BODY 

cities are no longer decimated by plagues 
in Christian lands. We are learning the 
wisdom of paying proper attention to the 
needs of the human body. More and more 
an intelligent people will grow impatient 
with silly folk who endanger their own 
health and that of the whole community 
by their refusal to recognize the commonest 
laws of hygiene and sanitation. 

We are learning the scientific use of 
proper foods, and the Government is wise 
in providing pure food laws to protect the 
public. We are learning the value of 
physical rest and exercise. We see the 
need of bodily cleanliness. We are learn- 
ing how to clothe our bodies in such ways 
as are healthful. 

The intelligent care of the human body 
is one of the outstanding features of our 
time, and lifts us by vast diameters above 
the sodden and rotten state of the savage. 
There are so-called civilized vices, but we 
are treating them and curing them, and 
there is no evidence that any such disease 
is likely to annihilate a civilized generation, 
3 [ 33 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

as in the case of barbarous and savage 
peoples who have been swept out of exist- 
ence by the vicious diseases they knew not 
how to cure. 

One has placed a right estimate upon 
the value of the human body when he re- 
gards it as an instrument to be kept under 
the control of the will. Its appetites and 
passions are legitimate, and are intended 
to serve a wise purpose in the human 
economy. No appetite in itself is to be 
regarded as sinful. The function of every 
organ is divinely ordered. But we must 
never forget that we are to be the masters 
of our bodies. The brutes yield to instinct. 
The law of God, written in their bodily 
natures, which we call instinct, is the 
excuse for all their actions. We attribute 
no moral quality to the action of a brute. 
It does what it does by instinct. 

We, human souls, have bodies which 
are not wholly dominated by instinct. 
Some of our bodily organs do act as we 
say, instinctively. Important functions 
proceed by the expansion and contraction 

[34] 



A MAN'S BODY 

of what we term involuntary muscles. The 
great vital processes go on without con- 
scious control or interference. But in 
every act of our bodies there is prearranged 
by God a place for the exercise of our own 
will. We possess the power of independent 
choosing. That quality which attaches to 
the human will, giving it the power to 
choose for itself its own course of action, 
involves moral responsibility. A moral 
quality attaches to human actions which 
are willed. We can use or abuse our 
physical appetites. We can master them 
or we can become their slaves. The true 
attitude of a human soul toward his body 
is that of a master toward his slave. 

Our wills should sit on the throne. The 
tragedy of life comes when passion climbs 
up to the throne of life and grasps the 
scepter from the grip of will and causes the 
man himself to cringe like a slave. We who 
dwell in these bodies are to be their abso- 
lute masters. They must do our bidding. 
Every appetite and passion must be under 
the perfect control of the will. Only the 

[35] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

fool excuses his prodigality and profligacy 
on the ground that his appetites enticed 
him. Of one thing we may be sure, and it 
is this: No one law of God runs counter 
to another law of God. 

No one's health requires the violation 
of the laws of purity. God's moral and 
physical laws work in harmony. When one 
violates the clear mandate of God in the 
realm of morals, no good can result in the 
realm of his physical being. We are to be 
the judges as to what is best for our bodies. 
Will and judgment must decide; not the 
clamoring appetites which seek to rule. 

It is the part of a child, not that of a 
mature man, to plead excuse for bodily 
excesses on the score that his passions 
clamored. These bodies of ours are to be 
kept under the control of a wise and 
masterful will. Our human body must 
ever be regarded as a sacred temple. If we 
rightly uncover our heads in the house of 
God, because we recognize that it is the 
place where God meets His people, how 
much more should we reverence the human 

[36] 



A MAN'S BODY 

body which God declares is the temple of 
the Holy Ghost? 

God comes down in mysterious fashion 
and dwells with us in the temple of flesh. 
How clean we should keep it! How sacred 
we should regard it! Nothing should enter 
it which can defile it. 

Then the human body is the place where 
we dwell. It is our earthly home. Just as 
we regard our house and seek to keep it a 
place of purity and sweetness and all good- 
ness, so we should guard our bodies and 
keep them clean and pure. There is about 
all this the feeling of a sublime and divine 
self-respect. We should seek to keep our 
bodies up to the level of their best. It is 
right that we should beautifully adorn them. 
God wants us to clothe them in beauty. 
There is no virtue in an ugly garment. 
We should keep them sweet and clean. 
There are times when some unkindly acci- 
dent may have befouled our bodies until we 
have felt like hating ourselves, being repug- 
nant to ourselves. But we quickly restore 
our bodies to a state of normal cleanliness. 

[37] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

If some men could only catch the flavor 
of their own foul breath or know the dis- 
gusting odor diffused from their sinfully 
unhealthy bodies, they could not help but 
despise themselves. 

Not only because we want the society 
of the good and clean, but because our own 
self-respect demands that we have a decent 
body-house in which to dwell, each of us 
should see to it that our bodies be ever 
kept at their highest levels of purity and 
health. 

In closing, I do not wish to dogmatize, 
nor appear wise above that which is writ- 
ten. But I must not refrain from stating 
that there is a crowning reason why we 
should value our body. Jesus Christ taught 
that this mortal body should become im- 
mortal; that this corruptible body should 
become incorruptible; that this earthly 
body should become a heavenly. 

''Great is the mystery of godliness." I 
can not explain the mystery. But whatever 
may be our own view of the exact nature 
of the doctrine of the resurrection of the 

[38] 



A MAN'S BODY 

body, we are plainly taught that the human 
body is sown in corruption and is raised in 
ineorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is 
raised in glory. The trumpet shall sound 
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, 
and we shall be changed. That human 
body upon which this mighty work shall 
be wrought, and with which we shall dwell 
in a mysterious fellow^ship for all eternity, 
is something of more value than we often 
think. 

It is a rich possession. It is one of the 
fortunes God has given us. Let us prize it 
as a rare gift from Him. 



[39] 



A Man's Mind 

A man's mind fixes his place in the 
world. There may be exceptions to the 
rule, but they only prove it. There is no 
one quality which so permanently locates a 
man in the estimation of the world as the 
intellectual. A man may have a good 
body, and be a perfect Apollo in his physical 
beauty. He may meet all the requirements 
necessary to make him a model for the 
sculptor. He may be as muscular as some 
Sandow, and yet be regarded as a mere 
physical brute. He may have some rare 
beauty of voice for song or speech. He 
may have some skill and suppleness of 
fingers, and yet if he lack brains, he will 
fail in life. No mere physical perfection 
will avail for men and women who are 
made in God's image and whose beauty 
and strength are not to be found in the 
realm of the physical. 

[ 40 ] 



A MAN^S MIND 

What folly to boast of a thing in which 
a beast excels! Manhood is not measured 
around the biceps flexor, nor about the 
thigh or chest. I recently overheard a 
young fellow boasting to another that the 
day before he had run one hundred yards 
in ten and a half seconds. I could not 
refrain from telling him that I knew a little 
yellow dog in my block who could beat 
him. 

One day in college a great big fellow 
came up good-naturedly to me and, squar- 
ing himself off in fighting fashion, said, 
"Mitchell, I can knock you out in the 
second round.'' I replied, "Get away! 
I know a little Jersey bull who can knock 
you out in the first." 

You see what I am driving at. What 
•folly to boast of a thing in which a beast 
excels you! I once saw on the billboards 
of my town a great colored lithograph 
portraying the crowned heads of Europe, 
in full royal regalia and wearing their 
crowns. In the midst of them stood the 
one-time champion prize-fighter of the 

[41] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

world, clad in evening clothes, while royalty 
gazed at him in admiring and adoring 
wonder. A young street gamin had taken 
a piece of charcoal and written under the 
prize-fighter, ''Jim is the best man in the 
world/' It was a lie. He was among the 
worst ! Manhood does not consist in brawn. 
One day there was born in England a 
babe so frail and delicate that they thought 
he could not possibly live, he was so small 
and sickly; but he lived. Yet he was three 
years old before he could walk, and as he 
grew up into little boyhood he was so 
fragile his parents would not let the neigh- 
bors ' children play with him, for fear they 
might break him. He grew up into delicate 
manhood, and never in all his life weighed 
one hundred pounds. But one day England 
needed a man. Look yonder to the Bay of 
Trafalgar. See there the united fleets of 
Spain and France, and yonder the fleet of 
old England. Look at the English flag- 
ship. See there, on the quarterdeck, that 
little fellow, one arm gone, lost in a former 
battle, one eye gone, lost in a former en- 

[42] 



A MAN'S MIND 

gagement. There is that still hush which 
precedes the coming storm of battle. All 
are awaiting the order to begin. That 
little man puts his thin palm up to his pale 
lips, and in a wheezy, piping voice calls to 
the color-bearer, who is to run up the signal 
and give the orders to the whole fleet: 
^'England expects every man this day to 
do his duty. Fire!" And there opened 
out that awful fire which swept the united 
fleets of Spain and France forever from the 
ocean; and that day little Lord Nelson 
meant more to old England than a thou- 
sand prize-fighters. 

You may have a body as big as a bull, 
and yet possess no more brains than a 
bullfinch. It seems to be a well-known 
fact in science that a human giant is an 
intellectual degenerate. What he makes 
up in flesh he loses in brains. A man's 
place in the world is not fixed by the size 
of his collar, but by the size of his hat. A 
woman in a hat store was buying a hat for 
her husband, but could not think of his 
size. Finally the clerk said, ^^ Madam, 

[43] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

does your husband wear a No. 6?" ''Yes/' 
said she; "that's it. How did you happen 
to know.^'' He rephed, ''I have often 
observed that men whose wives buy their 
clothes for them, wear a No. 6 hat.'' 

One may have kind and influential 
friends, but lacking mental ability he can 
not sustain himself. Our friends can do 
much to help us. They can give us a 
chance. They can open up for us a market, 
but we have to furnish the goods. Many a 
youth might succeed if only he had an 
opportunity. He is kept in mediocre places 
because he has no friends. But all the 
friends in the world can not secure success 
for one unless he is able to sustain himself 
in the place he occupies. Many a young 
man wonders why he is not advanced. It 
is because he has given no evidence of 
fitness for a better place. 

Some things friends can not do for us. 
They can not give us brains. The most 
cruel thing which could happen to one is 
to have his friends put him in a high place 
from which he would be sure to topple 

[44] 



A MAN'S MIND 

and fall because of his incapacity to main- 
tain himself. Far better to fill well a place 
lower than that for which one is fitted, 
than to attempt to fill a place higher than 
one's abilities will warrant, for overthrow 
and disgrace are sure to follow. 

Far better have brains and no friends, 
than friends and no brains. If you have 
brains you will win friends. But if you have 
only friends, they can not supply the 
brains. It is what we ourselves fit ourselves 
for, not what our friends may do for us, 
which fixes our place in the world. This 
is the mistake so often made by the chil- 
dren of the well-to-do. They say: "My 
father will get me a place. I need not 
worry." But father can not enable the 
son to fill the place acceptably. Such youth 
rely on influence, rather than on their own 
peculiar fitness; their failures are tragedies. 

The sons of the well-to-do are as capable 
and intelligent as those of the poor. They 
so often fail because they plan to substitute 
influence for personal ability. They think 
they do not need to know. Whereas, if 

[45] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

they only could understand it, they ought 
to be all the better equipped, for the more 
will be expected of them as they occupy 
higher places which their relatives open 
to them. 

The sad thing we see every day is the 
inferior place in the world which many a 
youth must take, in spite of the fact that 
he has money. The pathos consists in his 
inability to see how small and mean he 
looks to thoughtful eyes. He is mentioned 
in sporting and social columns as a great 
clubman, a polo player, and a champion 
amateur golfer, and he leads the german, 
and he thinks he is somebody, when all 
wise people know he is a weakling and still 
a boy, playing games, when he ought to be 
a man and doing a man's work in the 
world. 

Riches afford no excuse for lazy leisure. 
Wealth is expected to furnish just enough 
leisure to fit one by such mental training 
as will make him a leader in some noble 
effort. There is no place in a democracy 
for a so-called leisure-class. There is too 

[46] 



A MAN'S MIND 

much work to be done. They who need not 
toil for their daily bread, should give them- 
selves to the larger and broader needs of 
the community. In a thousand ways the 
man of wealth may be a real benefactor to 
mankind. When he refuses to be, and pre- 
fers to spend his leisure time in pleasure- 
seeking, he is forced to take a place which, 
in the eyes of the world, is contemptible. 
Not what a man has, but what a man is, 
fixes his place in the estimation of the 
world. 

One may be genuinely religious, yet his 
piety will not make up for lack of brains. 
No doubt pious people will go to heaven. 
As one star differs from another star in 
glory, so the same law obtains in this less 
glorious sphere of the world; and the 
merely religious man can not claim a re- 
sponsible and effective place among men 
merely on the score of his piety. Even a 
preacher needs something else than re- 
ligion. I am a constant advocate of the 
theory that character is one of the greatest 
business assets. I insist that genuine piety 

[47] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

is the best asset in life; that no honest 
toil in any field can be so well done, other 
things being equal, as by a man who is 
true to himself, his neighbors, and his 
God, and that is what I mean by a religious 
man. But I am here insisting that religion 
alone will not qualify for a high and useful 
place in life. Each position requires some 
special and technical fitness. In all the 
trades and professions a cultivated brain 
is needed for the proper and successful 
operation of the essential forces required. 
In the mechanic arts, as well as in the so- 
called professions, a religious life will bal- 
ance and direct the forces of brain and 
hand; but that alone will not suffice. It 
is the man who knows, who will succeed. 
The world to-day stands aside and gladly 
gives place to the man who knows. Let 
it once be known that a man is fittest, and 
there will be no permanent protest against 
his preferment. 

The man in any trade who goes beyond 
his appointed task and thinks about it, 
and contrives to do it in some better way, 

[48] 



A MAN'S MIND 

who dares to initiate something new, is 
the man who gravitates to a leading place. 
It is 

"The slaves of custom and established mode. 
With pack-horse constancy to keep the road, 
Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny- 
dells, 
True to the jingling of their leaders' bells,'' 

who never fill any worthy place in life. 

Only a few men win distinction in the 
professions; only a few men reach the top. 
They are the men of brains. It is so in 
business. The mental capacity of the 
business man fixes his place in the business 
world, other things being equal. There is 
no such thing as luck in a world that is 
ruled by law. Nothing ever simply hap- 
pens. Liebnitz was right when he said, 
''Nothing ever happens without its suffi- 
cient reason.'' Success in business is not 
an accident. Be assured that great indus- 
trial and commercial enterprises are con- 
ducted by men who know. 

Do not sit down and bemoan your fate 
because you fill no important place in life. 
4 [ 49 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

If you are in a small place, study yourself 
out of it. I said one day to a clerk at the 
general delivery window in a postoffice, 
''I used to be a general delivery clerk/' 
In astonishment, he asked me, ''How did 
you get out of it?'' I replied, ''Studied 
myself out." I was then getting ready for 
college. 

Whatever may have been the condi- 
tions in the past, it is true that he who 
enters the lists and seeks to succeed in life 
to-day has to compete with trained and 
educated minds. The old-fashioned farmer 
even could not now compete with the 
modern agriculturist. The farmer must 
know a thousand things of which his father 
never dreamed, if he is to succeed in these 
days of chemistry as applied to crops and 
soils, and the laws of life as applied to 
stock-breeding. It is the farmer now who 
knows, who is succeeding. 

In all the trades and professions one 
must compete with the trained specialist. 
The vocations are highly specialized. I 
do not wonder that a young doctor was 

[50] 



A MAN'S MIND 

asked, when he said he was going to special- 
ize as an eye-doctor, ''Which eye?" 

I am urging all youth who possibly can 
— and how few can not? — to secure the 
best possible training of your minds. The 
beast depends upon instinct. God has 
given you a mind, which is to guide you 
in all your efforts. Make the most of 
it. Get, if possible, a college education. 
Do not be sidetracked. Do not make 
the mistake of taking a short-cut into a 
trade or profession. You will make speed 
by stopping to equip yourself. Your com- 
petitors will be trained men. You are not 
a child of genius or so much smarter by 
nature than others. You need all the help 
an education can give you. 

If you can not go to college, go to night- 
school. Get in some Young Men's Christian 
Association class. Take up some special 
line of work. Do some one thing better 
than anything else; or, better still, do that 
one thing better than anybody else. You 
w^ill need your brains in any walk in life. 
Success is a question of improvement of 

[51] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

mind. Not only will the cultivation of 
your mind give you success in your life's 
vocation, but it will give you a larger 
world to live in. It will widen your horizon. 
It will give you more resources of genuine 
enjoyment. It will unclog and widen every 
avenue down which flows the rarest and 
richest pleasures and delights which can 
inspire and charm the soul. 

Not only will you gain personal effi- 
ciency and delight, but it will vastly widen 
your influence to be one whose mind is 
recognized as trained and masterful. Others 
will listen when you speak, and follow 
where you lead. Men will follow the man 
who knows. 

Train your mind and fill it with the 
best knowledge, and you will make your- 
self kin to the world's best thinkers. You 
will be ushered into the fellowship of the 
goodly company of the great minds of all 
the ages. You will be given a master-key 
which unlocks all doors where dwell the 
high and mighty minds which have been 
making, and, to-day, are making this old 

[52] 



A MAN'S MIND 

world move farther on into the light and 
liberty of the eternal day. 

And all this will make you a larger man. 
For, after all, the big business in the world 
is not to make a fortune or a living, but 
to make a life. You yourself should be 
bigger than your business, for you are to 
be when it is gone. Not what you leave 
behind when you are dead is to be the 
measure of your success, but your true and 
lasting success will depend upon what you 
take with you up through the realm of 
silent air and singing birds to the throne 
of God. 

Dedicate your mind to God. Let Him 
illumine it. Think His thoughts after 
Him as He has stamped them on stones 
and on stars. Find your way up through 
nature to nature's God. Let the mind be 
in you which is in Christ Jesus. By and 
by God will set you to the performing of 
finer mental problems than the calculating 
of eclipses or the discovering of another 
dimension. All the finer fibers of your 
intellect will be stretched to the solving of 

[53] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

problems involving the reaches of infinity 
and the operations of omnipotence. Just 
as mind so largely fixes your destiny in 
time, it must do so in eternity. Just as 
there is nothing known in the mere proc- 
esses of death to change a sinner into a 
saint, neither is there known any similar 
process in death to change a fool into a 
philosopher. We are now qualifying for 
eternity. Grow a mind fit for the best 
intellectual companionships and accom- 
plishments in the eternal world. ''Gird up 
the loins of your mind'' for all eternity. 



[54] 



A Man's Heart 

The heart was long regarded as the seat 
of the affectional nature. Just as other 
quahties and attributes of the soul were 
located in various parts of the body, so the 
affections were supposed to center in the 
heart. So it has come to pass that we 
even now talk about heart-power, when we 
really mean affectional strength. When 
we say that a man has no heart, we mean 
that he is cold and selfish. It is in this 
sense I use the word, and it is in this sense 
Solomon used it when he wrote the ad- 
monition: "Keep thy heart with all dili- 
gence, for out of it are the issues of life.'' 
There is force in the term; for the 
heart is the most important organ of the 
body, and it is literally true that out of it 
are the issues of life; and we should keep 
the heart with all diligence, for it alone can 
determine the issues of life. It is a striking 
fact that while we use the word in the 

[55] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

symbolic sense, it is equally true that the 
heart is the source of all that is most vital 
and eternal. Out of it are the issues of 
life. 

A man may be a splendid animal; he 
may have a well-cultivated mind, and yet, 
lacking heart, will never be a great success 
in life. 

"'It is the heart, and not the brain, 
Which to the highest doth attain." 

An American woman tells in a recent 
number of a current magazine how she 
succeeded in getting into the lecture-room 
and studying under one of the most eminent 
philosophers in Heidelberg University, who 
had formerly refused allowing any woman 
to enter any of his classes. She won such 
distinction as a student in philosophy that 
the whole Faculty did her honor. She says : 
''When it came to saying good-bye, the great 
old man, full of years and of honors, for 
fifty years a reverenced professor, visited 
in his home by grand dukes and princes, 
and by the emperor himself, took me by 

[56] 



A MAN'S HEART 

the hand and, with tears in his eyes, said 
to me solemnly: 'I can imagine nothing 
more beautiful in all the world than for a 
young girl to come away alone across the 
sea to seek wisdom, to find out understand- 
ing, and to succeed brilliantly as you have 
done. Now I want to say one last thing 
to you : Do n't forget that you have a 
heart; for truly out of the heart are the 
issues of life.' Almost overcome by the 
sudden full realization that this was the 
thing of greatest significance for me 
gleaned from those years of study, I con- 
fessed earnestly: 'O, your excellency, you 
great men in Germany have taught me that; 
your child-like simplicity and directness; 
your big, tender hearts, and your large 
faith have shown me that the merely in- 
tellectual development I came to seek is 
not, as I had thought, the highest thing in 
the world. I came here seeking intellectual 
development as the greatest thing to be 
gained in life; I go away perceiving that to 
the heart is given perception to which the 
mind is blind; to the heart are vouchsafed 

[57] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

insight and vision never granted to the 
intellect alone/ 'Do you remember/ he 
asked me, 'what we are told Richard 
Wagner was wont to say as he sat at 
breakfast with a new day before him? ^'If 
we could but keep our hearts pure this day, 
untainted by the many pettinesses, un- 
touched by the things the world deems 
important, undiverted by the fictitious 
values and standards set up by the various 
sections of mankind, who knows what 
visions — aye, of Infinity itself — might be 
vouchsafed to us/ '' 

We may admire cold intellect, but we 
can never love it. No man can win and 
hold friends who lacks in heart power. No 
art is comparable to the art of human 
approach. Good manners are based on 
character. That is why no genuine man 
can ever be a boor. He is a native gentle- 
man. To be a gentleman depends not 
upon birth nor station, but upon character. 

The rules of good conduct are not found 
in some red-book or blue-book, but in the 
Good Book, which teaches us ''to do unto 

[58] 



A MAN'S HEART 

others what we would have them do unto 
us." It is the kindly heart which speaks 
the kindly word. Who can set measuring- 
rod to the influence of a kind word? I 
venture that most of you can tell how 
some word once spoken has done more to 
give trend to your life than any other 
thing which has happened to you. The 
real value of life consists in its friend- 
ships. No man alone and separated from 
his fellows amounts to much. The unit 
gets its value from its relation to other 
units. One's successes in life are largely due 
to his friendships. Friendship is an asset. 
One's ability to make and keep friends is 
his most valuable capital. If you intend to 
do business with folks, you must learn to 
appreciate the value of heart-power. 

In these busy commercial times cool- 
headed business men are learning the value 
of a warm heart; and they are giving a 
touch of neighborliness to their financial 
transactions which lifts them out of the 
realm of mere material things into the 
atmosphere of love and friendship. 

[59] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

The folks who succeed in life, in all 
trades and professions, are they who can 
explain the circulation of their blood; they 
have hearts. The most tragic failures in 
life are the men of splendid mental equip- 
ment, and yet under whose ribs lies a cake 
of ice. The person most to be pitied in 
the world is the man who causes every one 
who approaches him to feel uncomfortable 
in his presence. Instinctively men shrink 
from him and children will not go to 
him. 

A prominent rich man in Elgin, once in 
talking to a group of boys, told them 
always to speak to him when they saw him 
on the street. Not long afterward a little 
fellow ran up to him on the street, and 
called him by name and said, "Good 
morning!'' He only got for answer, "Run 
away, boy! do n't you see I 'm busy.?'' At 
heart, the man was an iceberg, 

I buried a man in Cleveland, Ohio. 
His only brother told this about him: "I 
never knew a child or a dog that would 
not go to him." Children and dogs in- 

[60] 



A MAN^S HEART 

stinctively recognize a kindly heart. If 
any little baby would refuse to come to 
my arms, unless lie were a genuine little 
son of Belial, I would feel ashamed. I 
never was prouder than when one day in 
a crowded street, a stray dog, being stoned 
by boys and trembling with fear, ran to 
me for protection. I would have defended 
him at the cost of my own safety. 

Heart power is the great motive power. 
Love makes the impossible easy. Im- 
pulses which have sprung from the heart 
have been the most impelling forces in 
human history. It was the power of the 
heart, inspiring the crusaders, which broke 
up the feudalism which had held Europe 
in an iron mold for centuries, and made 
progress possible. 

It was love in the hearts of the Puri- 
tans and Pilgrims, impelling them to cross 
stormy seas and populate desolate forests, 
and thus create a new world-civilization. 
Get at the secret of all great world-move- 
ments, and you will discover that the only 
power volcanic enough to create such up- 

[61] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

heavals is the power of love in the human 
heart. 

Love turns a task into a triumph. Love 
knows no drudgery. The Uttle girl illus- 
trated what I mean when she replied to 
the inquiry, "Is not the baby very heavy 
for you to carry in your little arms.'^'' 
''No, he isn't heavy. He is my little 
brother.'' I once asked a little girl, who 
came a little late to the dinner-table be- 
cause she had been putting her little sister 
to bed, ''Is it your task to put sister to 
bed.!^" She sweetly replied, "Yes, Dr. 
Mitchell, but it isn't a task." Love will 
transform a sacrifice into a sacrament. It 
is so with all our daily labor — when love 
is wanting, any toil is labor. The hardest 
duties become privileges when shot through 
with love. A man once expressed his 
wonder to our ex-President concerning his 
ability to do so many difficult things and 
to do them efficiently, and asked for an 
explanation. The answer was, "Well, you 
know, I like my job." 

Love destroys sacrifice. Love makes 
[62] 



A MAN'S HEART 

the hero. The soldier ceases to be a soldier 
and dwindles into a mere hireling when he 
thinks more of pay than he does of his 
patriotism. We expect the true soldier to 
be a hero. We are never surprised when a 
mother gives up her life for her child. We 
always expect that when a choice must be 
made as to saving her own life or that of 
her child, that her own will be sacrificed. 
Love has made up the roll of the mar- 
tyrs. It has given superhuman strength to 
the arm. Men have done, when love has 
ordered, what they never could have done 
had not love been the motive. Love sus- 
tains in the darkest trials. Dreyfus was 
asked what kept him from insanity when 
confined on Devil's Island, hundreds of 
miles away from friends and family, with 
every device of malice employed to drive 
him to despair. This was his reply: "I 
knew that my wife and little children be- 
lieved in me and still loved and honored 
me, and would not believe the lies which 
were being told about me. Their love for 
me and my love for them kept my mind 

[63] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

clear when my tormentors were seeking to 
drive me mad/' 

God makes His appeal to man to keep 
His law on the score of love, Jesus says, 
"If a man love Me, he will keep My Words." 
Indeed, such is the character of the divine 
law that it can not be kept unless love 
prompts obedience. And when love does 
prompt, it is easy. Wicked and disobedient 
men do not keep God's law, and they do 
not want to, and they think they could 
not even if they wanteji to. It seems ab- 
surd that they could ever love the things 
they now hate, and hate the things they 
now love. They say it is contrary to human 
nature, and they speak the truth. It is 
contrary to human nature in its sinful 
state. But the mystery and strength of 
Christ's gospel consists in making easy that 
which seems so hard. The yoke becomes 
easy and the burden light. When once 
one gives Christ his heart and comes to 
love Him, then he finds it easy to keep His 
law. All things become new. His old 
human nature is touched by the divine 

[64] 



A MAN'S HEART 

nature, and love makes God's law a 
delight. 

The seat of sin is in the heart. If the 
heart is wrong, so is the whole life. Men 
sometimes talk glibly of their intellectual 
difficulties in relation to the Bible. They 
tell us they are honestly skeptical, and 
ofttimes they speak the truth. But in 
most cases, the trouble lies not so much 
in the head as in the heart. Those same 
men accept a thousand other things as 
difficult to believe as anything required of 
them by the Bible. In religion, as well as 
in most other things, we find it easy to 
accept what we want to receive. In re- 
ligious matters it is vitally true that ''out 
of the heart are the issues of life.'' God's 
great appeal is to the heart. He says, 
^'Give Me thine heart." He knows that 
when that citadel surrenders. He has won. 
When one's life is bad, it is easy to be an 
infidel. When one's life is bad, one wants 
to doubt the Book which condemns him. 
When foul miasmas fill the heart, the rising 
fumes disorder the brain. When the heart 
5 [65] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

is diseased, the mind is affected. A bad 
life makes a bad creed. 

We need to obey the wise man's in- 
junction, "Keep thy heart with all dili- 
gence, for out of it are the issues of life.'' 
Let us cultivate the heart. It is the key 
to our success in time and in eternity. We 
can not value it too highly. Let us keep it 
clear for all pure and sweet companionships. 
Let us train it to love only the good. Let 
us reserve its best for the occupancy of 
Him who is the fairest among ten thousand 
and the One altogether lovely. 



[66] 



A Man's Soul 

The incomparable value of the soul is 
assumed by Jesus Christ. The unique 
message of Jesus was that the soul of each 
individual is worth more than all the 
world beside. Some one has said that 
''Jesus discovered the soul/' I would 
hardly put it that way, but I would say 
that no one ever placed so much emphasis 
upon the value of the individual as did He. 
While His message was a social one, He 
never lost sight of the individual in His 
great concern for the multitudes. 

Whatever may have been the social 
message of Jesus, He always magnified the 
worth of each unit in society. He held no 
theory of ''collectivism'' which did away 
with the supreme importance of "indi- 
vidualism." He makes each man feel that 
he is of infinite value; that if he were the 
only being on the earth, it were worth all 

[67] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

the cost he was paying to secure his re- 
demption and salvation. Jesus was never 
so much interested in men that He ever 
overlooked the man. 

It is not true that man has a soul. 
Man is a soul. You are a soul. Your soul 
is yourself. Your soul has a body, a mind, 
a heart. You yourself are not a composite 
of body, mind, and soul. The soul is a 
unit. The soul dwells in a body, thinks 
with the mind, and feels with the heart. 
The soul is rich in possessing such a dwell- 
ing, such intellectual resources, and such 
an affectional nature. 

You, a soul, are possessed of three for- 
tunes in your body, mind, and heart. 
But your great fortune is yourself. Sim- 
ply to be, to love life as a sentient, po- 
tent personality, is God's greatest gift 
to us. We should daily thank the all- 
creative God that He has given us con- 
scious, personal being. We are not mere 
parts of a universal life, as are birds and 
beasts and other living creatures. Our 
worth and dignity consist in the fact that 

[68] 



A MAN'S SOUL 

we are separate and distinct personalities. 
We have the power of independent thought 
and action. We can even array ourselves 
against God. 

The very power we have to oppose our 
Creator and work athwart His purposes is 
evidence that we are not a part of some 
universal principle of life; for then God 
Himself would be like a house divided 
among itself. We are conscious of our 
independent powers. We know we can 
reason and think for ourselves. The only 
relation we bear to the brute is that we 
both have bodies made from the dust. 
The only relation we bear to God is that 
He is the Father of our spirit, the Creator 
of our being. Yet I am no more a part of 
God than I am a part of my earthly father. 
By no mere process of self -division has God 
multiplied Himself in humanity. 

To claim that we are parts of the uni- 
versal life, aside from being untrue, is both 
presumptuous and belittling. We are the 
offspring of God, but not a part of Him. 
If anything is plainly taught in the Bible, 

[69] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

and is confirmed by the universal testimony 
of human consciousness, it is that each of 
us is an individual soul, possessed of inde- 
pendent existence, and endowed with qual- 
ities the value of which and the duration of 
which are such as to cause all other and 
temporary things to fade into insignificance 
when compared with it. 

By whatever creative process you like 
to think God prepared the human body for 
the occupancy of an immortal soul, we are 
plainly taught that into the nostrils of that 
body "God breathed the breath of life." 
In that hour man was "created in the 
image of God, and after His likeness.'' It 
is this divine parentage and this divine 
likeness which lifts each soul into such 
majesty and worth. By a diameter vast 
enough to reach from the finite to the 
infinite is a man removed from all other 
animals. "How much better is a man 
than a sheep .'^" Jesus once asked, and of 
course, got no answer. The difference in 
value is unspeakable. 

When we come to compare man with 
[70] 



A MAN'S SOUL 

man, as when we would weigh men in the 
scales of mere physical strength or beauty, 
there is vast difference in the values of 
men. When we compare one man with 
another man in his ability to succeed in a 
business or profession, there is a vast 
difference. Put men in the intellectual 
scale, and often one man will outweigh 
many men. When men are considered in 
their quality to shine in society and be 
forces of strength or adornment among their 
fellows, there will be found vast inequalities 
in value. But when men, as souls, stripped 
of the things which have mere temporary 
and worldly value, are placed in God's 
scales, then all men are of equal worth. 
''With God there is no respect of persons.'' 
All men are His children. All are equally 
valuable in His sight. It is hard for us to 
believe this. We draw our lines of division. 
We divide up humanity into strata accord- 
ing to our ideas of values, and we talk of 
the lower and upper classes of society. We 
are so familiar with the intellectual, and 
educational, and social, and physical, and 

[71] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

ethical differences among ourselves, that 
it is almost unthinkable that such separat- 
ing qualities will cease to be in any possible 
hereafter. These differentiating qualities, 
which so plainly divide men, seem to run 
down so deeply into the very roots and 
fibers of the human soul that we feel that 
they are inseparable attributes of the soul 
itself. We conclude that these accidental 
surface showings are the elemental con- 
stituents of one's very being. 

This is what leads to so many false 
estimates. We judge men by that only 
which we see and which we think we 
understand. We pride ourselves upon our 
ability to judge human nature, and yet 
how incapable are the wisest of ns? We 
can only see surfaces. We note symptoms. 
We judge motives. We think we discover 
secret springs in human action. We blunder 
in a thousand ways. 

Many a man has had a bad start in life. 
The accumulated weaknesses and the di- 
minishing virtues of past generations event- 
uate in him. The physical sins of his fore- 

[72] 



A MAN'S SOUL 

fathers now appear in his anemic and dis- 
eased body. His heart never once sent 
an ounce of healthy blood into his 
brain-lobes. The flaccid wills and child- 
ish impulses of his ancestors are seen 
in his aimless, and yet clamoring pas- 
sions. The thoughtless forerunners have 
given an acute slant to his brow. Yield- 
ing grandfathers have retreated his chin. 
Even some drunken father has given to 
his imbecile child a flattened forehead 
and a drooling mouth. Others have 
much to mark them as men of promise 
and power, while yet some lurking, un- 
seen weakness dooms them to sure and 
ignoble failure. Who can sit in judg- 
ment upon such of his brethren? How 
incapable are we of judging a soul that 
lives back behind such ugly and forbidding 
surfaces? When God shall, on some day 
of glorious emancipation, strip such a soul 
of its clinging and damning excrescences, 
who dares guess to what heights of excel- 
lence and power it may rise? 

Many a man has been handicapped by 
[73] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

some peculiar trait for which he is not 
responsible. It takes so little to sidetrack 
or overthrow a human life. The ''fly in 
the ointment" has ruined much precious 
spikenard. Only a little thing, possibly 
unknown to the man himself, may make 
him always appear in a false light. Many 
a tragedy in life is traceable to some little 
idiosyncrasy. Men, just in reach of some 
crown, have failed while the world looked 
on and laughed, because of some pitiful 
drawback which seemed so small, but which 
in reality was as baneful and stenchful as 
the dead albatross about the neck of the 
ancient mariner. 

The world too often thinks it is behold- 
ing comedy and holds its sides with glee, 
when, in fact, it is beholding tragedy fit to 
make all heaven weep. The world laughs 
at the sprawling unfortunate who has 
tripped on a trifle, and passes on, not 
knowing that a skull has been fractured 
and a life snuffed out. 

We are apt to judge others amiss who 
have never had a fair chance in life. Every 

[74] 



A MAN'S SOUL 

day in this town some babe is born into 
some Chicago hell. It will grow up in hell. 
It will live its brief, hard life in hell. It 
will never hear a mother's prayer. It will 
never know a father's blessing. It will 
never receive an unpolluted kiss. That 
life will be scarred and maimed from its 
start. All intellectual stimuli will be lack- 
ing. No moral culture will be given. In- 
deed, the vast mass of all people born into 
this world, as it is now constituted, have 
never had a fair chance. Either the great 
God who created them will give them an- 
other and better chance, or He has re- 
sources whereby such unfortunates are 
enabled to rise out of such conditions into 
some sort of moral beauty, just as He has 
devised the divine process by which a 
plant may rise from the pond's slime up 
into the pure whiteness and sweet per- 
fume of the water lily. Who are we 
to say, as we poke around with poles 
into the slimy bed of the pond, that 
those snaky things can never rise above 
the surface into a beauty fit for a king's 

[75] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

table, and shed a perfume sweet as 
heaven ! 

If we would get any adequate concep- 
tion of the value of the soul, we must try 
and view it from God's angle of vision. He 
sees the soul in its possibilities. 

Men in Florence passed every day a 
dirty, unshapen stone, with its filth ac- 
cumulated through years. Michael Angelo 
saw in it his ''David," and let him out with 
the bold strokes of his mallet on chisel. 
Vasari tells us that nothing has come 
down to us from ancient Greek sculpture 
comparable to Angelo's ''David.'' It is 
worth a trip to Florence to see only that 
statue. 

Little Dutch children played marbles 
with what they thought were pebbles, till 
one day an expert saw that they were uncut 
diamonds; and then the diamond fields of 
South Africa were opened and set all the 
crowns of the world to sparkling. 

God knows a diamond when He sees it, 
whether it be cut or uncut. He knows its 
value, both before and after the lapidary 

[76] 



A MAN'S SOUL 

has unveiled its sunbeams. And so God 
can see a king in a shepherd boy as quickly 
as iVngelo saw the marble ''David'' in the 
rejected block of Carrara marble, 

God could see a Prime Minister for 
Pharaoh in a little lad left by his jealous 
brethren in a pit and afterwards sold into 
slavery. Jesus Christ was as sensitive to 
ill-smelling garments of Galilean fishermen 
and knew their unlettered state as well as 
others did. But He saw in them the future 
apostles of His gospel and the very founda- 
tion stones of the spiritual kingdom. 

God was as well aware of the bitter 
hate and unquenched zeal of the Pharisee 
bigot as were the scattered followers of 
Jesus. But He saw more than they saw. 
He saw in Saul of Tarsus the apostle to the 
Gentiles, who turned the world upside 
down by putting out the fires of every 
Jewish altar, and causing every Greek and 
Roman idol to topple from its pedestal. 

God knows what is in man, and so He 
puts infinite value on his soul. If the 
humblest of us could only see, as God sees, 

[77] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

our vast possibilities, we would no longer 
trifle with ourselves. We would begin to 
have that sort of self-respect which would 
keep us from a thousand pettinesses and 
meannesses. We would keep our souls 
unspotted by the foulnesses which are 
about us. We would stretch our powers 
to measure up to what God knows we are 
capable of. 

God knows the real worth of a human 
soul, for He knows what it cost. We get 
some idea of the value of a thing from what 
it cost. Try to compute, in any values you 
know anything about, how much God has 
expended in material wealth upon our 
bodies and minds. What vast treasures 
He has stored up here on earth for our mere 
material pleasure! Such sort of wealth is 
so overwhelming and ever present that our 
eyes are blinded by it, and we see little 
else. Material wealth is so dominantly be- 
fore us that we compute all values in terms 
that are only and always physical. But 
if we have eyes to see and hearts to feel, 
we will discover that God has expended 

[78] 



A MAN'S SOUL 

His highest gifts upon the souls of men. 
His ''unspeakable gift'' is Jesus, His only 
begotten Son, who died for our souls' 
redemption. Heaven was robbed of its 
fairest Jewel in order to redeem a human 
soul. Into what vast heights of dignity 
and worth does a human soul leap when 
viewed from the cross on Calvary! 

Do you wonder that Jesus asked the 
question, ''What shall it profit a man if 
he shall gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul; or what will a man give in ex- 
change for his soul?" 

Yet the awful tragedy is daily enacted, 
as seen in the immeasurable folly of a man 
exchanging his soul, not for the whole 
world, or any considerable part of it, but 
we see a man losing his soul for a few dol- 
lars. We see a man give up his soul for a 
lie. We see him sell his soul for a little 
temporary fame or power. We see him lose 
his soul and miss an eternal crown for one 
term of political office. We see him lose 
his soul for one night of loathesome pleas- 
ure. 

[79] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

If we would but let God have our souls 
for time and eternity, the highest flights 
of fancy, the loftiest visions of inspiration 
are inadequate to portray to what indefi- 
nite reaches of glory He might lift us! 

You, yourself, in the personality of an 
immortal soul, are worth more than all the 
stars which shine in a winter sky. What 
are you doing with your soul? Are you get- 
ting ready for its coronation? Or are you 
trading it off for a "mess of pottage?'' 



[80] 



A Man's Amusement 

If any man has a right to deHght and 
be happy, it is the man who walks in the 
way of the Lord. It always has been true 
that ^'the way of the transgressor is hard/' 
and that "the path of the just shineth 
more and more unto the perfect day." 
The devil's lie is that if you want to be 
happy, be bad; and if you want to be 
miserable and lonely, be good. 

It is quite generally held that to be 
religious is to be solemn and unhappy. 
Men everywhere recognize that in the 
normal man or woman there is an instinct 
for fun — hence, as religion makes you 
serious and solemn, it is contrary to nature 
to be religious; the normal man likes fun; 
the abnormal is the religious man, and 
hence opposed to fun. This notion is a 
libel on both God and man. The love of 
pleasure is as innocent as childhood. It is 

6 [81] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

as instinctive as hunger, and can be grati- 
fied as legitimately as can hunger. God 
put the love of fun in human nature as 
surely as He put hope and reverence. All 
young life loves play. The human animal 
is no exception to that rule. Indeed, man 
and the monkey never seem to outgrow 
the desire for play. I have no doubt that 
God is possessed of a vast sense of humor. 
I am sure that when He created the first 
monkey, He must have had a hearty laugh. 
I know that there are some solemn folk 
who think that God had nothing to do 
with the creation of the monkey, for He 
surely could not be connected with any- 
thing so undignified. Yet I know of no 
theory of creation which can account for 
the monkey without involving divine re- 
sponsibility. 

When God created the world, it was 
good and beautiful; but it was not until 
He had created men that the world became 
significant. And it was not until God had 
created children that the world became 
truly interesting. It is said God made 

[82] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

man out of the dust of the ground. Sug- 
gested by that fact, some bright mind has 
said that God created the boy out of 
dust and electricity. I have the notion 
that the most normal man is he who never 
loses the electricity out of his being. 

A man's amusement will depend upon 
his tastes. One man will get his fun out 
of physical exercise. That is a good form 
of amusement which will rest the brain 
while it exercises the body. Nothing but 
good can come to him who loves healthy 
exercise, especially when secured out-of- 
doors under God's clear sky. It is a good 
thing to get near to nature. There can be 
no doubt that America and England have 
the advantage over Germany and France 
in that our people find their greatest pleas- 
ure in out-of-door games. The whole 
moral standard of our people has been 
raised since we began to find our recrea- 
tions out-of-doors. The large place given 
to games of an athletic character in our 
colleges and universities has elevated the 
whole moral tone of college life. The 

[83] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

athletic field and the gymnasium must be 
counted along with the Young Men's 
Christian Association when you begin to 
account for the cleaner college life of our 
day. The college atmosphere, no more 
than the atmosphere of home and business, 
is altogether free from moral miasma; but 
it is cleaner and sweeter to-day than it 
has ever been. A majority of our students 
in State and Church colleges is connected 
with our Christian Churches. This condi- 
tion is in striking contrast with that which 
existed at Yale and other colleges seventy- 
five and one hundred years ago, when a 
Christian student could hardly be found, 
save those studying for the ministry. 

I dare assert that the average morality 
of our American student-body is far above 
that of any other group of young men found 
outside of college halls. The pleasures of 
physical exercise can largely explain a 
rising moral standard. But if the moral 
effect were unappreciable in either direc- 
tion, the indulgence in pleasurable out-of- 
door games would be justified on the ground 

[84] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

of their benefit to the physical health. 
No man is wholly lost to good who takes 
delight in physical exercise, and who finds 
his fun out-of-doors. 

Another sort of man will get his fun 
from games requiring alertness of mind and 
memory. Such methods of recreation fur- 
nish delight to many. They delight in 
mental gymnastics. They grow glad over 
battles fought and won on chess and 
checker-board. Thousands of men and 
women forget the care and responsibilities 
of their daily tasks in the absorbing char- 
acter of their play. 

Many men and women find their high- 
est recreative joy in music and various 
forms of art. Such pleasures give not only 
delight, but culture. We are discovering 
that far more people are capable of enjoy- 
ing such things than we formerly supposed. 
The camera, with its possibilities of color 
and motion, in producing the beauties and 
wonders of nature, is showing to millions 
in our day that they are at heart true artists 
and know how to enjoy the beautiful. The 

[85] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

perfection and the cheapness of the repro- 
ductive art are placing in even the humblest 
homes the copies of the rarest masterpieces, 
and the average man can now delight his 
eyes with pictures which in former days 
could only be seen on the walls of kings. 
The inventive genius of man has made it 
now possible for the multitudes to sit in 
their own homes and hear the reproduced 
voices of the world's greatest singers and 
players. The piano, that great and abused 
musical instrument, has now been placed 
within the mastery of the musically un- 
taught, so that he can sit at the instru- 
ment and reproduce the very tones of the 
greatest pianists of all time. 

We have come to a great day in human 
history when the arts, formerly patronized 
and enjoyed only by the very rich and pow- 
erful, have become the pleasurable and 
uplifting means by which the millions can 
now enjoy themselves. Multitudes who 
once thought that the artist was a rare 
being, far apart from the rank and file of 
men, have discovered that they, too, are 

[86] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

artists, capable of enjoying the best in 
music, scuplture, painting, and architec- 
ture; for he who knows and loves art is an 
artist. Chromos and hurdy-gurdies, plas- 
ter of Paris saints and mansard roofs have 
no longer any appeal. The millions who 
find their fun in art demand the real thing, 
and spurn the counterfeit. 

Some folk, alas! many folk, find their 
amusement in games of chance. There is 
something in human nature to which the 
element of chance strongly appeals. This 
fact is no condonement. That men love 
easily and naturally the bad, is no apology 
for its existence, nor reason for its indul- 
gence. There is a selfish streak in every 
human which manifests itself in a desire 
to get something for nothing. 

The love of gambling is due to the hope 
that fate will do for us what God intends 
shall be done by the exercise of our God- 
given reason. The insult to reason by de- 
throning it, by accepting chance, or so- 
called fate, to be the arbiter which shall 
decide the actions of rational beings, in- 

[87] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

stead of proceeding along the way pointed 
out by a wise and discriminating judgment, 
is the essential sin in all forms of gambling. 
One has a right to dispose of his own 
property on terms to which he willingly 
submits. But for him to risk his property 
and direct his actions by the mandate 
of anything other than his reason is to 
cease by that much to be a man, and to 
lay himself open to be swayed by whatever 
whimsical fancy the vagaries of chance 
may decide for him. No rational being can 
proceed on that principle without violating 
the laws of his nature and of God, and 
thereby becoming a sinner. 

Most forms of gambling in which men 
indulge are conducted by designing men 
who see to it that something else than mere 
chance decides in their favor. All forms 
of deceit are employed to catch the ignorant 
and unwary. In most cases they who gam- 
ble are trying to beat some other man at 
his own game. But all that can be said 
to persuade a man to quit gambling is 
usually of no avail. When once the gam- 

[88] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

bling virus gets in one's blood, he is all but 
hopeless. There is more hope for curing 
a drunkard than a gambler. A gambler 
is a man who is completely disqualified for 
conducting a regular and honest business. 
This is why all decent people are so averse 
to such games as pander to the gambling 
spirit. 

All games of chance have in them the 
power to inoculate men and women with 
this disease which is so fatal. I do not 
wonder that the use of the ordinary playing- 
cards has been denied by wise parents to 
their children, knowing as they do that 
their use in gambling is so universal, and 
that the knowledge of card-games is so 
apt to lead to the placing of some stake 
on the outcome of the game, which must 
necessarily hinge on the turning of a card. 
All such games fan the flame for gambling, 
and when once that flame is started, it is 
most likely to end in a conflagration in 
which all the nobler attributes of manhood 
and womanhood are consumed. 

God pity the man who can only find 
[89] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

his fun in games of chance ! He has opened 
his soul to all the evil birds which fly. No 
honest business can afford to harbor the 
presence of any man who spends his leisure 
in any form of gambling. Even if financial 
and moral ruin do not follow immediately 
in the life of him who finds his chief pleasure 
in the gaming table, his time spent indoors 
instead of out-of-doors, and in such mere 
time-killing ways which add nothing to 
health of body or of mind, is a sufficient 
reason to put that sort of fun under the 
ban of every intelligent person. 

There is a class of men who never think 
they are having a good time unless they 
are conscious of their flesh. They must be 
eating or drinking or indulging some bodily 
appetite. There are men who work during 
the day like galley-slaves, and then spend 
all they make in mere bodily indulgences. 
Millions of men work industriously and 
then spend everything they earn for liquor, 
tobacco, and even grosser appetites. Such 
men never think they are having any fun 
unless they are pandering to their appetites, 

[90] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

Their fun is false. The awful tragedy of 
humanity lies in the fact that such vast 
multitudes ruin themselves in the pursuit 
of pleasure. They do not know how to 
have a good time. The saddest Sunday 
afternoon I ever knew was spent in St. 
Petersburg amid the thousands of the lower 
classes in the Russian capital, watching 
them in sodden and abject idiocy, filling 
themselves with vile vodka, which inebri- 
ateda but did not delight. The men and 
women were simply besotted and saddened. 
Their working hours were spent in securing 
enough money to purchase the cheap fiery 
fluid that gave them that sort of amuse- 
ment. 

Go any night in this city to the cafes 
after the theater and see men and women 
having their fun. It consists in feeding their 
fat and diseased bodies. See corpulent 
women, with vast accumulations of un- 
healthy fat which is held in place by stays 
of steel and string. See the gross men, 
with red and pimpled faces, indulging their 
inordinate appetites with coarse food and 

[91] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

fiery liquors. To behold the sons and 
daughters of God, created in His image, 
finding their fun at the trough like feeding- 
swine, is cause to make angels weep and 
devils laugh. The millions of dollars spent 
annually in Chicago in saloons and brothels 
is a sad commentary on the character of 
multitudes who seek their amusement in 
ways so ruinous. 

There is a smaller class of men who find 
their recreative pleasure in the realms of 
literature. I know a young man who 
spends all his savings from a meager salary 
on books and magazines. All his leisure is 
spent in reading them. No night is so 
happy as the one given wholly to the com- 
panionship of good books. Give him a 
book and a light, and he dwells in a great 
world, peopled by the wisest minds and 
engaged in the loftiest pursuits. Happy 
the man or woman who can turn away from 
the sordid relations of a toiling and per- 
spiring company, and have fellowship with 
the greatest minds of all time, while they 
tell him their noblest thoughts and open 

[ 92 ] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

to him a door which leads into the vast 
world in which they dwell. One may be 
forced to elbow the common and unclean 
while his daily work goes on, but when the 
day's work is done and the hours are then 
his own, he may choose the rarest spirits 
for fellowship and find the rarest joy in 
their society. Good books are the cheapest 
and worthiest of all pleasures. They give 
breadth to one's vision, inspiration to the 
mind, folly for our laughter, and the very 
spice of life. Who need lack for the best 
sort of fun who knows how to chum with 
books .'^ 

There is still another class of men who 
spend their leisure in pursuit of pleasure 
by contact with the secret and interesting 
operations of nature. Their avocation is 
the pursuit of some by-path in science. 
One finds the microscope the door through 
which he enters into the vast world beneath 
him, fascinating him with the unspeakable 
beauties and wonders which are so close at 
hand, and yet never dreamed of by any but 
those who know the way of approach to 

[93] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

them. Another finds the telescope the 
door through which he enters the infinite 
reaches of the vast worlds above him, and 
walks, unhindered and unharmed, amid 
falling stars and whirling nebulae. Others 
find sources of never-ending delight in the 
study of the flowers, the birds, the stones, 
the insects, the miracles of the chemical 
laboratory, or the surprises of electricity. 
Bright young men are playing in the 
realms of science, and some of them are 
discovering things of which the learned 
were ignorant; and it is the acknowledged 
fact to-day that amateurs, only playing in 
science, have made some of the most im- 
portant discoveries, and invented some of 
the most practical devices which have rev- 
olutionized our modern civilization. A 
boy can get as much fun out of a wireless 
station he himself has constructed, as out 
of flying a kite, which involves so little 
skill and brings so little knowledge. He is 
a wise person who has learned how to find 
his pleasure in the pursuit of some science 
where, at every turn, some new surprise 

[94] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

awaits him, and some new fact rewards 
him with the prize of some interesting, if 
not useful, knowledge. 

There are others who turn away from 
the cares of toil and business to find their 
joy in Christian service. By that I mean 
that such find their delight in some sort 
of task which contributes to human wel- 
fare. The only way we can serve God is 
to serve our fellow-men. Wise is he who 
discovers that the best way to have for 
yourself a good time is to give a good time 
to some one else. The happiest, jolliest, 
sanest folk I know are they who find their 
own pleasure in giving pleasure to others. 

In a thousand ways one can turn away 
from his daily vocation and spend his 
leisure in wise forms of social service which 
will bless him who gives as richly as him 
who receives, and will make the world in 
which he lives a little more like heaven. 
What is more rational for a sane mind, seek- 
ing joyful recreation, than to depart wholly 
from his own accustomed world and live 
for a little while where his kindly words 

[95] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

and deeds may brighten and uplift other 
lives less fortunate than his own? 

He who seeks pleasure must also refuse 
to make that pursuit the chief aim in life, 
neglecting the real work which each must 
do in a world where so much needs to be 
done. No man or woman is quite so con- 
temptible as the one who lives only for the 
gratification of personal pleasure. None is 
really so unhappy as he who seeks only 
happiness. The modern parasites on the 
body-politic who create nothing, who add 
nothing to the world's assets, who only 
consume what others produce, are the real 
enemies of society. 

A man must earn by toil his right to 
rest. A man must earn his right to enjoy 
himself by manly work done in some field 
of honorable endeavor. If you have lazily 
spent the hours of the day in selfish indul- 
gence, you have no right to any fun at 
night. Only when you have lived like a 
man are you entitled to have the fun of a 
man. Unless you can prove up on having 
earned your day's bread, you are unquali- 

[96] 



A MAN'S AMUSEMENT 

fied to enter at evening any door of legiti- 
mate pleasure. Fun must follow toil. 

In the pursuit of amusement, the wise 
man will keep within his financial re- 
sources. Any pleasure which costs more 
than you can afford, will prove at last the 
viper to sting you. Finding pleasure in 
things you can not afford, is proof of your 
inherent dishonesty. Eventually some one 
else must pay for your folly. Only a fool 
can expect to find pleasure in joys which 
he has practically stolen. One has no right 
to congratulate himself on his good appear- 
ance who wears a borrowed coat. 

No one with any self-respect can find 
joy at any feast when he knows that the 
only proffer he can make for his entertain- 
ment is his pusillanimous person to be 
kicked out of the presence of more honest 
people. No man has any right to enjoy 
a pleasure excursion when he must pay for 
it with money he owes his creditors. I do 
not blame honest clubmen who have only 
contempt for the member who is posted for 
non-payment of bills which have been in- 
7 [97] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

curred in securing pleasures and luxuries 
which he is unwilling or incapable of pay- 
ing for. 

And then I lay it down as an inviolate 
principle that no man should seek fun at 
the cost of hurt to his character. Only 
fools will pay an infinite cost for an infini- 
tesimal gain. No wonder that God calls 
the man a fool who will barter his soul for 
even the whole world as purchase price. 
O5 that men would see the folly of living 
only for fun; who live only for the pleasures 
of this life, and make no provision for 
eternity! 

A Bedouin, lost in the desert and starv- 
ing, found a bag which he thought might 
contain some food. To his horror he dis- 
covered that the bag contained only the 
most beautiful jewels. He was found dead, 
with the bag tossed far from him. 

The souls of men to-day are starving 
while they have at hand vast treasures. 
What will it profit you if you gain the 
whole world and lose your own soul.? 

[98] 



A Man's Work 

It is a good index of character to find 
out how a man is wilhng to spend all the 
working hours of his life. 

There are two very important questions 
which must early confront every thought- 
ful person: The first is, "Where did my 
life come from?'' and secondly, ''Where is 
my life going to?'' But there is a third 
question, equally important, and surely as 
practical, ''What shall I do with my 
life? " We may not get satisfactory answers 
to the first two questions; but that third 
question is one we can answer for ourselves; 
for that is something we can decide for 
ourselves. 

Each man finds himself under the law 
of necessity to work. It is the divine order. 
Life depends upon it. Other life in the 
world is amply provided for by the provi- 
dence of the Creator; but man, of all the 

[99] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

animals, must work in order to live. Each 
man finds that he is under the necessity of 
constant toil in order to maintain his own 
life. But he also discovers that he is under 
the law of brotherhood, and must work to 
help on the cause of humanity. "No man 
liveth to himself.'' We are all so related 
that our work must react on all others. 
The most serious question which every 
youth must meet on the threshold of life 
is this: ''What shall I do with my life.?^ 
What shall be my job.'^" To help you 
answer that question, I will say that you 
must follow your bent. Each of you has 
one. You have at least one. In all prob- 
ability you have only one. That is, you 
have a natural aptitude in one direction. 
You are best fitted to do some one specific 
thing. It is very important that you 
should at the very outset of life rid yourself 
of the notion that you are very versatile. 
The following advertisement appeared in a 
daily newspaper: ''Wanted — Situation by 
a practical printer, who is competent to 
take charge of any department in a print- 

[100] 



A MAN'S WORK 

ing and publishing house. Would accept 
a professorship in any of the academies. 
Has no objection to teaching ornamental 
painting and penmanship, geometry, trig- 
onometry, and many other sciences. Has 
had some experience as a lay-preacher. 
Would have no objection to form a small 
class of young ladies and gentlemen to 
instruct them in the higher branches. To 
a dentist or chiropodist he would be in- 
valuable, or he would cheerfully accept a 
position as bass or tenor singer in a church 
choir.'' There was appended this post- 
script: "Will accept an offer to saw and 
split wood at less than the usual rates." 
That postscript secured him a job at once, 
and he began to "saw wood." 

We are all familiar w^ith the old law — 
"Jack of all trades and good at none." 
There is nothing so fatal to success as a 
futile versatility. The man who can do 
some one thing and do that one thing well, 
is bound to succeed. And you may be 
well assured that you can do some one 
thing. Each has at least one talent. Your 
[101] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

key to success is to discover what it is. 
In all probability it is the thing you like. 
If you like it you will be more sure to do 
it well. 

And, on the other hand, if you like to 
do any certain thing and it comes easily, 
and you do it well, you may be convinced 
that in the doing of that thing your life 
will be a success. One must early learn 
what he can best do, and then emphat- 
ically refuse to be tempted aside from the 
doing that one thing. We must voluntarily 
decide to be ignorant of many other things 
in order that we may be wise in the doing 
of some one thing. Thoreau says that 
"the measure of a man's learning will be 
the amount of his voluntary ignorance.'' 
And he is right. You can not know every- 
thing. You must choose. Your success 
will depend upon the vigor with which you 
specialize on some one line of endeavor. A 
mariner's needle in the factory, before it is 
polarized, will point in any and all direc- 
tions, and is of no practical value. After 
it has been magnetized, it will always in- 

[ 102 ] 



A MAN'S WORK 

variably point toward the pole. So you 
will never point steadily in any direction 
until you have been polarized by a choice 
of your ideal career. Then you will amount 
to something, and do something worth 
while. 

Misery and failure will follow if you try 
to do the thing you have no taste for. If 
we like our jobs, we will get much done and 
find no friction on the axles. Here is the 
explanation of so much unhappiness. Men 
try to do the thing for which they have no 
fitness or taste. My advice is that you 
keep to what you are by nature. Never 
desert your line of talent. Be what nature 
— that is, God — intended you to be, and 
then you will succeed. Be anything else, 
and you will be worse than nothing. Not 
only the miseries of life are to find their 
explanation in uncongenial employments, 
but the failures in life can be traced to the 
same source. No wonder the poet is miser- 
able and a failure when he tries to make 
horseshoes! No wonder the blacksmith is 
starving while trying to be a poet! 
[103] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

Do not drift into a job. One of the 
meanest things ever said of me was spoken 
by a man who was asked by one who had 
known me as a boy, and had lost trace of 
me and wanted to know what had become 
of me. He asked this man if he knew what 
had become of me. His answer was: 
"'Have you never heard? Why, he drifted 
into the ministry!'' As if I had been a bit 
of aimless driftwood on the current of life, 
and at last had drifted into a landing 
place where I had never planned to go. 
Simply drifted. Implying that I had 
floated around from being a printer to an 
insurance agent, and then at last drifted 
into the ministry. Do not drift into a 
job. Think about it. Plan for it. Do not 
be in too great haste to decide what your 
life work shall be. Do temporary work, if 
necessary, to pay expenses, while you are 
getting adjusted and finding out just what 
your settled job shall be. Never take up 
a life work just because some one wants 
you to. It is fine to have wise advisers, 
and often friends may help you to a wise 
[104] 



A MAN'S WORK 

understanding of your own abilities; but 
never do it just because your friend 
urges it. 

Do not think you must follow in your 
father's footsteps, and do a thing because 
he has done it. His tracks may be too big 
for you, or too small for you. Make tracks 
of your own. 

One of the strongest temptations for a 
young man in this regard is to go along 
the line of least resistance. The average 
youth grows anxious to get on fast. He 
wants to make money quick. He is anxious 
to get married and settled in life. And so 
he quits college to get into some salaried 
position. He thinks he is taking a short 
cut to prosperity. In fact, he is taking the 
long cut to mediocrity and failure. 

Time spent in a wise preparation for 
some worthy task is not time lost, but 
gained. Thousands of young men have it 
ever to regret that they were thus side- 
tracked from their life-plans because they 
were in too great haste to get on to a self- 
supporting basis. Better go a little slowly 
[105] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

and carry out your program. You will 
gain in the end. 

Nine out of ten young men will choose 
the line of work which will bring them the 
quickest returns. That explains why the 
ranks of labor are crowded, and why the 
few high places of great reward are ever in 
search of capable occupants. The big re- 
ward only follows the long, hard toil. One 
can learn in an hour how to handle a shovel 
and receive a digger's wage. It takes years 
of toil and application to learn a compli- 
cated trade, and earn the expert's wages. 
Hence boys drive grocers' wagons when 
they ought to be learning a trade. Others 
are clerking when they ought to be in 
school. They are making the fatal error of 
taking the easiest and quickest way to 
secure a job. They have not seriously con- 
sidered what is the one thing for which 
they may have some unusual jfitness. They 
hurry into life and its responsibilities be- 
fore they have carefully thought out what 
is the one line in which they could best 
win a worthy place after long and careful 

[106] 



A MAN'S WORK 

training. Dean Swift has put this matter 
in his own quaint and forceful way: 

" Brutes find out where their talents lie; 
A bear will not attempt to fly. 
A foundered horse will oft debate 
Before he tries a five-barred gate. 
A dog by instinct turns aside 
Which sees the ditch too deep and wide. 
But man we find the only creature 
Who, led by folly, combats nature. 
Who, when she loudly cries, 'Forbear!' 
With obstinacy fixes there; 
And where his genius least inclines, 
Absurdly bends his whole designs." 

To help you answer that question, 
"What shall I do with my life.?" I would 
say, in the second place, put yourself into 
your job. Go at it with energy. You will 
fail if you are half-hearted. Throw all 
your vital powers into it. Put originality 
into your job. Use your brains. Think. 
Take initiative. Be not afraid to be orig- 
inal. Have self-confidence. Get out of 
the beaten path. Be yourself. Put thor- 
oughness into your job. You must go to 
the bottom if you expect to go to the top. 

[ 107 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

The reason why so many American boys 
fail in our business world is because they 
are unwilling to go to the bottom and 
work carefully and thoroughly up. Many 
heads of departments of great businesses 
in this city are men from abroad who re- 
ceived their training in Europe. They were 
willing to learn the first and least impor- 
tant things. They know the whole business. 

Men tell me that they find it difficult 
to secure American boys who are willing 
to begin at the bottom and work slowly 
their way to the top. Too many hope by 
some influential ''pull'' to get a start at 
the top. No wonder so many fall, with a 
sickening thud, to the bottom, never to 
rise! It is the fellow who does his work 
better than the others who proves that he 
is a better man. Mere favoritism may 
advance you, but only ability will keep 
you there. 

It is fine to have friends to help you up 

if you can hold yourself up when once you 

are placed there. Otherwise your con- 

spicuousness will only make you piti- 

[108] 



A MAN'S WORK 

able and despicable when, like ''Humpty 
Dumpty/' you take your inevitable tumble. 
You must put honesty into your job. 
I mean by that you must give a fair 
day's work for a fair wage. Do honest 
work. Scorn to be a deceiver. Be no party 
to any dishonest measure. You can well 
afford to lose your job, if you do so to pre- 
serve your honor as an honest man. Hon- 
esty is a great asset in any man. It is in 
demand far more than dishonesty. To 
find a man absolutely honest is like finding 
a pearl of great price. Young men think 
that ''smartness" counts; that to be a 
good dresser, to be a good talker, to be 
well connected are the important things. 
They are important; but unaccompanied by 
honesty they are absolutely unmarketable. 
Even a saloonkeeper will not hire a thief, if 
he knows it. The great business enter- 
prises of our day demand honesty, absolute 
honesty. Tell the banker that you are 
honest ninety-eight times out of a hundred 
when you have an opportunity to steal, 
and see what he will tell you. Tell even 

[109] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

the lawyer, whose clerk or partner you 
would be, that most of the time you tell 
the truth, and see what he will tell you. 
Be assured that if you engage in any hon- 
orable job, you will have to put honesty 
into it. 

Put your pride into your work. Do not 
be ashamed of your job, nor let your work 
be ashamed of you. The severest thing 
which can be said of the modern mechanic 
is that he seems to have no pride in work- 
manship. I fear that the trade-union has 
leveled down all workmen to the low level 
of the worst workmen, rather than lifting 
the poor up to the best; paying the poorest 
the same wages as the best, and holding 
back the quick and alert to the sluggish 
speed of the drone and the sluggard. The 
result has been that good workmen say: 
^'What is the use? I am not permitted to 
do more and better work than any one else; 
neither shall I be rewarded for superior serv- 
ice.'' And so he insults his own manhood 
and stoops to mediocrity and loses pride 
in his output and is a mere ''hand" — a 

[110] 



A MAN'S WORK 

thing he revolts so against, and yet which 
he has made himself by voluntarily sub- 
mitting to such standards. After saying 
that, I want to add that I must not be 
understood as intimating that you must 
not join yourself with your fellows in every 
honorable endeavor to lift not only the 
standard of your profession and trade, but 
also the standard of your output. Join 
with your fellows to secure your own just 
rights, and preserve the rights also of those 
who are to benefit by your labors. Organ- 
ization for self -protection is no justifica- 
tion for depriving other men of their indi- 
vidual rights and prerogatives. Your rights 
end where your neighbors' rights begin. 

In choosing your job, do not stop only 
to inquire, ''Is this the job in which I can 
make the most money.?'' Many a man has 
said to me, in condonement of the fact that 
he was in a bad business, ''Well, you see, 
I can make more money at this business 
than in any other. I need the money!" 
What is more contemptible.? Think of a 
man boldly and unblushingly asserting that 

[111] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

he is in a dishonest and damnable business 
because it pays roundly in dollars and 
cents! That is the excuse of the highway- 
man and sneak-thief. This is the excuse 
of the liquor manufacturer and dealer. 
It pays, of course it pays. Who would be 
found in a business whose products are 
ruined homes, blasted lives, and damned 
souls, if the hellish business did not pay.?^ 
You could not find a man in this town low 
enough to sell whisky if it did not pay. 
The promise of returns in hard cash is 
the justification men give for engaging in 
any paying business which is essentially 
bad and disreputable. But I ask you. 
Can a money-reward pay a man for the 
loss of his honor and his own self-respect.? 
Far better be an honest pauper, begging 
your bread from door to door, than a 
millionaire brewer or distiller, who is riding 
in his own private car to hell! 

I close by urging you to be bigger than 
your job. Any true man is worth more 
than the labor of his brain or brawn. 
Edison is bigger than his phonograph. 

[112] 



A MAN'S WORK 

Wren was nobler than St. PauFs cathedral. 
Angelo was loftier than his St. Peter's 
dome. The artist is greater than his can- 
vas. Any true man should be greater than 
his job. The most honored earthly jury 
will agree with God's measure of a man. 
You are to be measured by your manhood. 
Character is bigger than career. 

No matter how humble your honest 
toil, have a divine self-respect. Let no 
man despise you. The man who sweeps 
the streets in front of the church and earns 
his honest wage with which to support his 
many children, is as honorable in the sight 
of God and all right-thinking men as the 
man who occupies the pulpit. Longfellow 
had caught the vision of a man's true 
worth when he wrote: 

" Not in the clamor of the crowded street, 
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, 
But in ourselves are triumph and defeat." 

Your chief business is to build a life, 
not make a living. It will matter little to 
you one hundred years from now whether 

8 [113] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

you were rich or poor while toiling here 
below. Not ''How much did you make 
out of your job?'' but "What did you do 
with your life?'' will be the question upon 
which will hang your destiny. 



[114] 



A Man's Temptation 

There is a general belief in the existence 
of the devil. The Bible plainly teaches his 
existence. It informs us that he was once 
an angel in heaven. Christ Himself says, 
*'I beheld Satan as lightning fall from 
heaven." 

He is very frequently referred to in the 
Bible. He is called by various names, 
such as these: Abaddon, Accuser, Adver- 
sary, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Apol- 
lyon, Beelzebub, Belial, Devil, Enemy, Evil 
Spirit, Father of Lies, God of this World, 
Leviathan, Murderer, Power of Darkness, 
Prince of the World, Prince of the Power 
of the Air, Serpent, Satan, Tempter, Un- 
clean Spirit, Wicked One. A long list of 
names given to an imaginary being, if 
there really be no devil. In the New Tes- 
tament he is most frequently called the 
[115] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

devil. He is always represented as God's 
great enemy. He hates God. The things 
God loves, he hates. That is why he hates 
us. God loves us, and the devil therefore 
hates us. He is our great enemy. Every 
new-born soul finds a bitter enemy await- 
ing him. The devil seeks the overthrow 
and ruin of every human being. He is 
much wiser than we, although he is not so 
wise as God. God only is omniscient. He 
is more powerful than we, although he is 
not so powerful as God. God only is om- 
nipotent. God only is ubiquitous; but the 
devil, for all practical purposes, by means 
of the evil influences he employs, is present 
wherever there is evil to be done and souls 
to be ruined. He is far more subtle and 
powerful than we are, and we need ever to 
be on our guard. 

In Bible times we read of many people 
being ''possessed of devils.'' There are 
attempts made in these modern times to 
explain away such demon-possession on the 
theory that such persons were only mentally 
unbalanced or insane; that we so regard 
[116] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

now such cases, and we cure them by 
modern medical and surgical processes. I 
do not wish at this time to enter into the 
discussion of this phase of the question. 
I only wish to state somewhat dogmatically, 
without attempting to furnish proof, that 
the modern explanation does not explain 
and that the modern cases of insanity do 
not at all parallel the cases of demon- 
possession recorded in Scripture. The mod- 
ern theory does not explain the facts. 
Read Doctor Nevius's book on "'Demon- 
ology.'' He has been a missionary in 
China for many years, and records meeting 
with many cases of modern demon-posses- 
sion such as the Scriptures record. He 
tells of demons being cast out in such cases 
just as they were in Bible times, in the 
same way and by the same divine power. 
He and other missionaries in heathen 
lands meet with many cases of people 
possessed of devils, and they insist that 
such cases are rarely, if ever, found in 
Christian lands. This is an interesting 
aside, which I just refer to as a matter of 

[117] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

interest, and which is worth your while 
looking more deeply into. 

Here is the great fact which confronts 
us. If there is a great power that makes 
for righteousness, there is also another 
great power that makes for evil. I am not 
particular what you call it. If you wish, 
you may call it principle, or a person or a 
spirit. I shall speak of this great evil 
agency as the devil, and no one will fail to 
understand to whom I am referring. 

Every member of our human race has 
this great foe. He knows each of us per- 
sonally. He knows how to adapt himself 
to each of us. He knows how to approach 
us at the various stages of our growth. He 
knows how to adapt himself to a child 
and to a youth and to a man. He never 
appeals to a child with a man's tempta- 
tion, neither does he attempt to overthrow 
a man with a boy's temptation. He suits 
his temptations to each age. There are 
temptations which came to us when we 
were boys which we laugh at now. The 
temptation which he brings to men and 

1118] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

women in middle life are far different from 
those he brings to old age. The men most 
likely to yield to the social evil, which is so 
destructive of domestic felicity, are men in 
middle life. The devil induces these mar- 
ried men and women to think that they are 
too sharp and experienced to get caught, 
and so they lead the double life, which 
ends in disaster. Indeed, most of the great 
sinners recorded in the Bible were old 
sinners. Trust the devil to know how to 
adapt himself to each man's liability to 
sin, according to his time in life. An old 
man once came to me insisting that I preach 
a sermon against the dancing among the 
young people. He was greatly stirred to 
see the young people thus tempted of the 
devil. While he was talking to me, I 
smelled whisky on his breath. 

No doubt the devil made that simple 
old man think he needed a stimulant and 
that he was only taking Paul's advice to 
Timothy, only substituting something a 
little stronger and more palatable in its 
place, ''for his stomach's sake." You see 
[119] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

how hard he was on other's sins, not count- 
ing his own. No doubt the devil made that 
fooHsh old man think he was excusable in 
drinking whisky. The devil was too smart 
to try to catch that old fellow with the 
temptation which is so appealing to young 
men and women. He was too old to dance 
with anything! So the devil caught him 
with whisky. 

The devil sometimes makes great mis- 
takes and overreaches himself, for he is far 
from infallible; but he is far wiser than we, 
and we need constantly to be on our guard 
against his wiles. 

While men have many temptations in 
common with women, there are certain 
temptations which assail men at vulner- 
able points in their masculine nature. The 
devil knows a man's nature and how to 
overthrow him. 

There are three temptations which are 
especially strong in their appeals to men. 

The first is avarice. It is an insatiable 
desire for gain. It is the vice which is most 
apt to taint and corrupt the heart. It is 
[ 120 ] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

that inordinate purpose to get money at 
any cost. We all recognize the necessity 
of making a living and the honor attached 
to securing a competency. But this avari- 
ciousness is something more than that. It 
is selfishness supreme. It produces a hard- 
ness of heart. It subordinates every other 
thing in life to the one business of getting 
money. It covers up and smothers love 
for the higher and better things. It treats 
with contempt the hunger of the mind and 
heart and soul. It goes on the assump- 
tion that the soul can be satisfied with 
mere worldly possessions. That was the 
trouble with the ''rich fool" in the parable. 
Jesus called him a fool not because as a 
successful farmer he had raised a large 
crop and needed larger barns to garner it. 
Indeed, any one at all familiar with farm- 
ing in Palestine would call any man very 
wise who could raise even an average crop 
off its rocky and sterile hillsides. Any 
fool can raise corn in Illinois, but it takes 
a wise man to get a crop of anything in 
Palestine. No, he was not called a fool 

[ 121 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

for that. He was called a fool because he 
said to his soul, "Thou hast much goods 
laid up for many years; take thine ease; 
eat, drink, be merry." As if he could feed 
his soul on corn. Jesus called him a fool 
because he laid up treasure for bodily needs 
and was not rich toward God. He fed his 
body and starved his soul. 

This is the explanation of Christ's 
teaching about the difficulty of rich men 
entering heaven. He said: "A rich man 
shall hardly enter the kingdom of heaven." 
He said it was easier for a camel to go 
through the eye of a needle than for a 
rich man to enter heaven. That statement 
has great force with any one who has seen 
a camel crawling, unloaded, all panniers 
removed, almost on his knees, through the 
small gate in the great gate of an Eastern 
walled city, which is known as "the needle's 
eye." Christ meant that it is easier to get 
a camel down on his knees, and unloose 
his trappings and let fall his burden and 
drag him, growling and slobbering, through 
the little gate — the needle's eye — than to 

[ 122 ] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

get a rich man down on his knees, wilHng 
to be unloaded of everything which might 
prevent his entering heaven, possessing a 
spirit which prompts him to rely for salva- 
tion only on Jesus, saying, 

"Nothing in my hands I bring; 
Simply to Thy cross I cling." 

The latter is a harder thing, but Jesus 
says that it is not impossible; that with 
God's grace given, it can be and often is 
done. 

That was the trouble with the rich 
young ruler, who went to Jesus asking 
what he might do to gain eternal life. 
Jesus saw what we can not see in another, 
that the trouble with that young man was 
that the devil had tempted him to place 
his chief affections on his worldly posses- 
sions. He was rich for time, but he wanted 
to be rich for all eternity. Jesus saw that 
he cared more for the earthly than the 
heavenly treasures, and the only way he 
could ever be induced to lay hold on eternal 
life was to separate him from his worldly 
[ 123 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

wealth. He saw that this young man's 
soul was in danger from his love of money. 
So He used heroic measures. He required 
that he give up his money in order to save 
his soul. The young ruler would not pay 
the price. He loved money far more than 
his soul's salvation. He went away un- 
saved. 

This does not mean that every man 
must become a pauper to become possessed 
of eternal life. It does mean, however, that 
in some cases the devil has gotten a mort- 
gage on the human soul — that such a man 
loves money more than his soul. His only 
hope may be in the utter loss of his money. 

Such is the avarice of the masculine 
soul, that the devil uses that in order to 
entrap him. It is inordinate greed which 
leads so many men to ruin. It produces 
the gambler of all degrees and kinds. 
It creates the liquor-dealer. It is un- 
thinkable that men would engage in a 
business so damnable and ruinous to their 
fellow-men unless they got money for it. 
No other inducement would turn a man 
[124] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

into a saloon-keeper. But he will do it for 
money. 

It alone induces a man to become a 
"'white-slaver/' It alone induces men to 
engage in Sunday business and insult God's 
law. It alone justifies men in pandering 
to various tastes while they violate the 
Sabbath law. "It pays in money/' is their 
excuse. 

Worldly success is the reward and the 
excuse for all sorts of ungodliness. If the 
devil can only get a man to see that he 
can make money by his scheme, he yields. 
Love of money ruins more men and is 
doing more to people hell than any other 
agency employed by the devil. 

The second temptation to which men 
readily yield, so frequently and successfully 
employed by the devil, is worldly ambition. 
In man is an innate spirit of leadership. 
It shows early in life. Even children want 
to be "It'' in their childish games. This 
inordinate ambition in men produces jeal- 
ousy and envy, the twin vices which are 
the vilest which ever crawled over the 
[125] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

threshold of hell. Read human history, 
almost all of it written in human blood, and 
see how the devil has wrought ruin among 
men through this temptation. I have not 
time to dwell upon it. But I have but 
partly pulled aside the curtain that reveals 
an inferno of human ills, all wrought by the 
men who have yielded to the devil as he 
tempted them with promises of power and 
place. 

The third temptation that the devil 
employs in his appeals to men is through 
their fleshly lusts. It is not a pleasant 
thing for men to admit, but we men know 
that we are coarser-grained than women. 
Our appetites are coarser. We like heavier 
and stronger foods. We like hot condi- 
ments. We prefer ill-smelling cheese. We 
like strong coffee. Our liquor must have 
some tang to it. Men — ^not women — as a 
class like whisky. They like a drink that 
cuts. Men want much to be feeling them- 
selves. I mean by that they want con- 
stantly to be pandering to their physical 
sensibilities. Men, when not eating or 

[126] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

drinking, want to be smoking or chewing. 
I fancy many men stay away from church 
because they will not go so long a time 
without pandering to their fleshly appe- 
tites. Even the solemnities of the lodge- 
room are outraged by members, who can 
not sit down in decency for an hour with- 
out tickling their physical sensibilities. 

A man is more conscious of his flesh 
than is a woman. His lusts are stronger 
and more clamant. And when I say that, 
I do so with no purpose to condone evil 
in men. The strength of a man's passion 
is no excuse for its unlawful exercise. We 
are kingly built. Our will is to sit on the 
throne of our life. Will must sway the 
scepter. A man becomes a brute when his 
passions climb up the marble stairway to 
the throne, grasp the scepter from the hand 
of the will, and make it cringe like a slave 
at the foot of the throne. We are men, 
and are to be masters of our appetites and 
lusts. 

The strength of passion is only a chal- 
lenge to our nobler manhood. As men, we 
[127] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

are to be the masters. A man becomes a 
beast when he ceases to control his physical 
powers, and he becomes contemptible when 
he pleads excuse for his bestiality on the 
ground of his temptation. Neither in the 
Bible, nor recognized by the pure con- 
science of decent men and women, is there 
a double standard of morality — one stand- 
ard of purity for women and another, 
much lower, for men. It is an excuse, 
prompted by the devil, that there is some- 
thing in the masculine nature that requires 
the violation of all divine and social laws. 
It is not true. God requires like purity in 
man and woman. It is the failure to rec- 
ognize this law that is the strength of the 
social evil. It is the explanation of so much 
of ruined manhood. It is the cause of so 
many invalided young married women. The 
wild oats, which young men think they are 
excusable in sowing, must be reaped. The 
violation of nature's laws, which are God's, 
will reap its penalty in crippled manhood, 
diseased motherhood, and degenerate child- 
hood. God insists, and so does every right- 
[128] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

minded man, that the husband should 
meet his wife on the same moral level and 
bring to their home the same experiences of 
absolute purity. 

Thomas Hardy, in ''Tess/' tells how 
Angel Clare repudiated and put away from 
him his young wife when he learned that 
she had had a dark chapter in her past, 
although he had admitted to her that he 
also had had a dark chapter of impurity in 
his own past life. Before God he was as 
guilty as she, and it was a damnable thing 
for him to require of his wife a standard of 
purity which he himself did not possess. 
I am saying all this not to condone evil 
in my sex. I recognize the potency of the 
temptation, and it is this about which I 
am speaking. I am insisting that the devil 
strongly tempts men in the realm of their 
fleshly nature. As I have said, this is the 
strength of the social evil. I do not believe 
that every public prostitute is the victim 
of some man's duplicity and deception. 
As a class, they are not composed of fallen 
angels. They are sinners and are open to 
9 [ 129 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

like temptations, and their love of ease, 
vanity, and kindred vices lead them into 
lives of shame. But I insist that, were it 
not for the strength of this appeal to im- 
purity in men, the social evil would soon be 
eradicated. 

This explains the waste of millions for 
tobacco. While I do not put tobacco on 
the same moral plane with liquor, I know 
their close affinity, and how one calls for 
the other. Women, too, can learn to like 
tobacco, and the fools of that sex are 
rapidly increasing, so that many ''smart 
society'' women are taking on this par- 
ticular habit which almost universally pre- 
vails among prostitutes. Any woman who 
smokes lays herself open to the suspicion 
that she is a harlot. The virtue of any 
woman seen smoking in public is ques- 
tioned. This is because in our land and 
time it is a vice confined almost wholly 
to the women of the underworld. But it 
is the almost universal habit of men. The 
whole business is practically supported by 
my sex. Mere boys are ruining their 
[ 130 ] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

physical, mental, and moral natures by 
the tobacco habit. 

No one doubts that this strength of 
fleshly appetite in men is the almost 
universal support of the vast liquor traffic. 
In most instances women are protected 
from the greed of the saloonkeeper. Many 
cities prohibit the wine-room attachment. 
Women are arrested if seen entering drink- 
ing places. But it is almost universal that 
everything possible is done to tempt men 
to enter the drinking-place. They are 
sought out everywhere. Even growing 
boys are tempted in order to keep up the 
supply of victims. In hotels, restaurants, 
and most public eating places temptations 
to drink are placed before men. How few 
glasses are turned down at public banquets! 
Everything is done to appeal to this passion 
for drink. When I think how the devil so 
tirelessly seeks to ruin men; when I think 
how my brethren are being assisted in ways 
which have such mighty appeals to their 
masculine natures, I cry out: ^'Who is able 
to overcome.? How can we escape.'^" Bet- 
[131] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

ter men than we have been overthrown in 
this way. 

Some of the noblest and brightest of 
my sex have been hurled from lofty heights 
to deepest depths of shame and eternal 
overthrow. Of one thing I am sure, no 
man in his own strength is able to fight 
successfully the enemy of his soul. He 
needs God's help. God knows he needs it, 
and has provided it and urges us to use it, 
knowing full well that without it we are 
playthings in the devil's hands. 

I have good words for any cure that 
helps a drunkard conquer his appetite. 
But the best cure is the Christ cure. Col- 
onel J. F. Mines, of New York City, was 
the first great literary advocate for the 
"'gold cure'' for drunkenness. He boasted 
of his deliverance. And yet he died a 
drunkard. O, my brothers, we need help 
from God in the unequal warfare we wage 
with the devil! 

When I first saw Guido Reni's painting 
in the Capuchin Church in Rome, I thought, 
as I looked at the archangel standing over 

[132] 



A MAN'S TEMPTATION 

the prostrate form of the devil, with his 
ghttering sword in hand, his armor all 
shining, and not a feather in his helmet 
ruffled, that surely Guido never saw any- 
one come off victor over the devil in any 
such beautiful and untarnished fashion. 
A tussle with the devil means ruffled 
plumage and soiled garments. Riviere 
understood the struggle better. In his 
great painting of St. George and the Dragon 
he represents George on the ground, thrown 
from his horse, the horse entangled in the 
tentacles of the dragon and thrown back on 
his haunches, while George is all but dying, 
while an angel comes to his rescue. 

We men are waging an unequal fight 
with the devil. He is too much for us. 
That is why so many of you men are 
worsted in the struggle. Your vices grip 
you. Your passions control you. Your 
worldly ambitions are damning your souls. 
You need help. You need it badly. It 
must come quickly or you are lost. 

Sin is so mighty a thing in your life 
that you yourself can not cast it out. 
[133] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

Nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ can 
clean out the Augean stable of your sin- 
ful soul. Will you not let Christ come to 
your aid? He stands right here now ready 
to help you. Won't you let Him know 
you are willing? Will you not call to Him 
now? Make the sign. Give Him the 
token. Raise your hand, and by that sign 
tell Him that you ask His aid. Quick as 
lightning will He fly to your aid. 

The Iron Duke, in his losing battle at 
Waterloo, did not think it unmanly to 
welcome the help of Bliicher. Neither need 
you be ashamed to ask God's help in your 
battle with sin. Let those of us who take 
Christ now to be our Savior and Helper 
stand on our feet, while I tell God in prayer 
that we '"yield by dying love compelled 
and own Him conqueror.'' 



[134] 



A Man's Vote 

National government is so vitally related 
to the peace, progress, and prosperity of 
all the people, that it is of the utmost im- 
portance that each citizen shall so meet 
his personal responsibilities to the State 
that the largest good can come to the 
greatest number. Every individual comes 
to his highest dignity in a land like ours, 
where every citizen is sovereign, and where 
each can express his will by his vote. 

It is a part of the function of the 
Christian Church to educate, inspire, and 
direct its members in such ways as will the 
better fit them for the high duties of citi- 
zenship. 

In discussing this subject I shall lay 

down three fundamental propositions, 

namely, every citizen receives, and has a 

right to receive, much from the Govern- 

[ 135 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

ment; every citizen owes much to the 
Government, and every citizen should in- 
teUigently ally himself with one of the 
political parties. 

In the first place, then, let us remind 
ourselves of the blessings we receive from 
the Government under which we live. These 
blessings can be classified under five dis- 
tinct heads: 

First, the Government furnishes us with 
security of life. It undertakes to do for 
one what each savage undertakes to do for 
himself, namely, protect his life. The 
Government disarms every individual citi- 
zen and then, by police and military forces, 
undertakes to protect the citizens from all 
assaults upon their life and person. No 
man is allowed to carry a weapon in self- 
defense because the Government assumes 
the responsibility of his protection. That 
protection is extended to him, not only 
when living in his own land, but when 
traveling abroad in other lands. When he 
leaves his own shores the Government will 
provide him with a passport, declaring his 

[136] 



A MAN^S VOTE 

citizenship and calling upon all men every- 
where to respect him and his rights. Should 
his life be assailed or his interests in any 
way become involved while far from his 
native land, the entire resources of the 
Nation's army and navy will be employed, 
if necessary, to secure for him a safety and 
security which are guaranteed him under 
the Constitution. We move about, at 
home and abroad, in the proud conscious- 
ness that the whole power of the Nation is 
under bond to protect our life. 

Secondly, the Government also assumes 
the responsibility of protecting our prop- 
erty. There is an organized force of police 
to protect our property from attacks at 
home, and military and naval forces are 
ever ready to keep out the foreign invader 
who might seek to destroy or obtain our 
possessions. At great outlay of men and 
money, the Government undertakes to pro- 
vide for the humblest citizen that protec- 
tion which he could not secure through his 
own unaided efforts. The vast machinery 
of courts has been installed so that the 

[137] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

property-rights of every citizen shall be 
conserved and protected. 

In the third place, the Government un- 
dertakes a most important service to its 
citizens in providing for all a liberal educa- 
tion. Under such a form of government as 
ours, it is vital that its citizens be intelli- 
gent. An ignorant people are incapable of 
self-government. Education lies at the 
foundation of free government. A system 
of free and universal education is all- 
important. Our most vital institution is 
our public school system. The State rightly 
provides a means of education for all can- 
didates for citizenship. Hence, the logic 
of the situation involves education for even 
adult men and women who come to our 
land with the purpose of becoming citizens. 
Public night schools are provided for the 
purpose of fitting the applicants for Amer- 
ican citizenship with that degree of learning 
which is essential to intelligent sovereignty. 
The law of compulsion should obtain among 
that class, as well as among children under 
fourteen years of age. It is a great boon 
[138] 



A MAN'S VOTE 

vouchsafed to all its people when the Gov- 
ernment guarantees to give an education 
to all, regardless of sex, color, or creed. 

Fourthly, the Government provides an- 
other blessing, which we have enjoyed so 
long that we have ceased to appreciate all 
that it means to us. Other governments 
than ours have provided for their subjects 
security of life, protection of property, and 
some educational advantages, but nowhere, 
since human governments were born, can 
be found under any flag such a freedom 
of speech as our Constitution grants to the 
feeblest citizen. This blessing involves 
some risks and many dangers; yet the prin- 
ciple of free speech under a free govern- 
ment is so imperative that we must run the 
risks and dangers which the principle in- 
volves. Our free press often insults de- 
cency and invades privacy and fosters vice; 
nevertheless, a yellow press and a ''flannel- 
mouthed'' agitator can be endured rather 
than a censored press and padlocked lips. 
We suffer in America from too great free- 
dom of voice and pen; but I know of no 
[139] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

greater evil than that which would ensue 
from any curtailment of our rights of free 
speech. Compare with our lot the situa- 
tion in Russia, where the press is so color- 
less and vapid that it has no influence for 
good or ill; and where even college students 
dare not assemble to express themselves 
on any living topic. Think of Turkey, 
where officers of the law in recent years 
have forbidden Christian societies to print 
on their programs the Lord's Prayer, be- 
cause it encourages Turkish subjects to 
pray for the coming of the kingdom, which 
is not Ottoman! We should daily thank 
God that we live under a flag which pro- 
tects every man in his right of free speech. 
And then, that fifth blessing is liberty 
of conscience. We Americans are flaccid 
and spineless in matters germane to con- 
science and the soul, because we have never 
had to fight for our religious principles. 
You have not found the secret of the sturdy 
Scotch character until you discover what 
the Protestants of Scotland endured for 
their faith. Our American religious prin- 
[140] 



A MAN'S VOTE 

ciples rest lightly upon us because we do 
not sufficiently appreciate them. Our re- 
ligious liberty has bred a false latitudina- 
rianism, which reveals itself in a so-called 
broadness which, after all, is only an in- 
different thinness which is so diaphanous 
that it possesses no moral consistency. We 
have grown thin in our purpose to be 
broad. We need more frequently to read 
the history of our Puritan and Protestant 
forbears, and learn again what price was 
paid in red blood for the religious liberty 
we so richly possess to-day. 

The most potent and all-absorbing im- 
pulse which attracted the best immigrants 
to our shores was the glorious door opened 
to the oppressed and constrained souls who 
sought freedom to worship God according 
to the dictates of their own consciences. 
We are living to-day in all the high and 
finer things which glorify us as a Nation, 
on the lofty principles of that small but 
mighty minority of Godly men and women 
who came across unfriendly waves to sturdy 
shores in search of liberty of conscience. 

[141] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

The one great blessing granted us by 
our Constitution must be guarded more 
sacredly than ever festal virgins tended 
the holy fires — and that is our God-given 
right to worship our God in such ways as 
seem right to us, so long as we do not 
trespass on our neighbors' rights in their 
purpose to worship after their own man- 
ner. 

I have just briefly enumerated five of 
the best gifts of God to man, and each of 
them is bestowed upon the citizens of this 
country through the instrumentality of our 
civil government. 

In view of what the Government does 
for us, I do not hesitate to speak out boldly 
what each citizen owes the Government. 
It is a debt he can never fully repay. No 
wonder our best and bravest have paid their 
last full debt of love and devotion to their 
country by gladly shedding their hearts' 
blood in its defense and for its perpetuation ! 

I shall suggest at least five ways in 
which every citizen should be willing to 
express his obligation and pay in part, at 

[142] 



A MAN'S VOTE 

least, his debt to the Nation which does so 
much for him. 

First, he should give the Government 
his financial support. To maintain all the 
machinery of the Nation requires vast sums 
of money. When each does his share, the 
load is not heavy for any. It is right that 
each citizen should be properly taxed to 
support the institutions which so richly 
bless him. The repudiator of taxes is an 
ingrate, in addition to his dishonesty. 

We all repudiate the principle of taxa- 
tion without representation. This is a 
principle too little recognized in monarchical 
forms of government. And, to our shame, 
be it said, it is violated in the case of half 
of our American citizens who are deprived 
of the right of franchise. I have no excuse 
to offer for the violent and criminal women 
of England who are pursuing a brick-bat 
policy to secure their rights from Parlia- 
ment; but I do insist that those who are 
depriving them of their rights as citizens of 
the empire are in no sense guiltless. 

We in America are more to be blamed 
[143] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

than any other people for depriving our 
taxed citizens of their right to be repre- 
sented at the ballot-box, where every 
sovereign citizen should record his will and 
opinion. 

Secondly, each citizen owes his Govern- 
ment a portion of his service. That serv- 
ice may be rendered in taking time to vote, 
or in occupying such office as the machinery 
of Government requires. Our American 
history has furnished the names of many 
noble and good men who have given them- 
selves to public service. To-day a long 
list of youngerly statesmen have offered 
themselves for public service; men who have 
confessed that they had not the time for 
mere money-making, but who find joy in 
such altruistic service for humanity as the 
Government service in all its departments 
offers. 

There is a patriotism of peace as well 
as of war. One can as truly show forth 
his loyalty to the flag in times of peace as 
when the flag is assailed. I think one's 
patriotism is more severely tested in times 

[144] 



A MAN'S VOTE 

like these, when honest men in oflSce is a 
matter so vitally connected with the very 
permanency of free Government, than when 
some Sumter is fired on or some insult 
flung at our flag. 

We need to-day patriots who, by wise 
legislation and the enforcement of just law, 
shall protect our youth from greedy vice, 
our commerce from selfish monopoly, and 
our courts from partialities and bribes. 
We have our American roll of honor, and 
the names are those of patriots who gave 
their lives for their country when its life 
was endangered. We can not too highly 
revere their memory, nor too proudly re- 
gard the remnant of their compatriots who 
still survive among us to remind us that 
once men loved our flag so well they were 
willing to die for it. But we need to sup- 
plement that noble list with the names of 
patriots who in private business life, in 
the social circle, in courts of justice, in 
counting-room and market-place maintain 
the high principles upon which only can 
such a Nation as ours continue to exist. 
10 [ 145 [ 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

We have proved that we can survive 
as a Nation when war drenches our land 
with blood and when even internal strife 
threatens to sever our country in twain. It 
remains to be proved whether we have the 
vitality to endure the strain of individual 
immorality and commercial dishonesty. 

It goes without saying that every citi- 
zen should defend his country in times of 
war; but it is equally true that every good 
citizen should stand ready to protect his 
country when the purity of the ballot-box 
is threatened with pollution, when com- 
mercial integrity is assailed by greed, and 
when even our courts are laid open to the 
suspicion of dealing out uneven justice. 

In the third place, it is every voter's 
duty to cast his vote when occasion re- 
quires. One of the chief dangers to the 
Republic lies in the fact that so many of 
our best citizens refuse to vote, and that 
the full vote of the worst citizens always can 
be expected. In this city, more than once, 
thousands of our so-called best citizens 
have refused to vote, when only a few^ hun- 

[146] 



A MAN'S VOTE 

dred of them could have so affected results 
at the polls as to insure better laws and 
better law-makers. 

Many sections in our city to-day are 
represented by evil men, who stand for the 
worst in our political life, because self- 
respecting citizens have been too much 
engrossed in their own private gains to 
give the half hour necessary to the deposit- 
ing of their ballots. A ''ward-heeler'' is 
more to be respected than a millionaire 
merchant who refuses to vote, and allows 
the worst element in the tow^n to dictate 
its policies and manage its affairs. The 
grateful citizen will vote. 

In the fourth place, we meet our obli- 
gations to the Government by intelligently 
informing ourselves concerning public men 
and public measures. Time should be 
devoted to the securing of such know^ledge 
of men and measures as would render us 
capable and worthy representatives of a 
Nation whose very foundations must rest 
and can rest only upon the intelligence of 
its people. 

[147] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

And then, lastly, each citizen owes it to 
his country to lend his influence for the 
best things in political life. There are two 
sides to every question; but, on analysis, it 
will be found that those two sides are a 
right side and a wrong side. Too many 
reputable citizens are found on the wrong 
side — not so much from intention as from 
indifference. Often we can not easily know 
which is the right side. It can not be dis- 
covered always by reading one newspaper. 
Every newspaper is in a large measure 
partisan, and you never can find in it any- 
thing which will lend color to the side which 
it opposes. The least judicial institution 
in America is the daily newspaper. Yet 
we rely upon it for information to guide us 
in our actions in matters pertaining to 
public interests. Each interest now has its 
own printed organ, and no man can easily 
and lazily come to full knowledge in vital 
public matters. We owe it to our own self- 
respect, as well as to the Nation which so 
richly blesses us, that we diligently inform 
ourselves upon men and measures, and not 
[ 148 ] 



A MAN'S VOTE 

quickly conclude that everything our daily 
paper contains is true. No man can be a 
good citizen who reads only his party papers. 

I now come to say, in view of all I have 
thus far said, that each man should ally 
himself intelligently with some one of the 
political parties. In our form of govern- 
ment, political parties are a necessity. 
Measures are brought forward and carried 
to successful issue through the instrumen- 
tality of party organization. Parties ex- 
press their principles and thereby form a 
platform upon which they are expected to 
stand, both before election and after. 

Each citizen will find within some one 
of the parties an opportunity for the re- 
cording of his opinion and wish. All this 
is not to be interpreted as arguing against 
the independence of the voter. Belonging 
to a party does not imply that one must 
always respond to the party-whip and vote 
the party ticket. The hope of American 
politics lies in the independence of the 
voter. Whenever his party allies itself to 
men and measures he can not indorse, he 
[149] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

can record his protest at primary, conven- 
tion, or at ballot-box. 

Parties are learning in these days that 
they must know and express in their plat- 
forms the wishes of the people rather than 
listen only to the dictates of influential 
men with important personal interests to 
conserve. 

This is neither the place nor the time 
to discuss party differences. But I believe 
it is incumbent upon me to say that the 
great issues upon which the parties in the 
past differed are either dead or settled. 
In the near future there will be new party 
alignments. The living issue of our day 
is this : Should this Nation remain anchored 
to the past and continue loyal to the ways 
of the fathers, or go forward, under the 
leadings of Providence, to a wider and less 
selfish destiny.'^ 

At the core of our national life there 
must be purity, honesty, and integrity. In 
addition, there must be a noble altruism 
which is as far removed from all savage 
individualism as heathen anarchy is distant 

[150] 



A MAN'S VOTE 

from Christian civilization. We must learn 
how to live the social life. In other words, 
we must learn how to live our highest and 
best in connection and co-operation with 
our fellows. We must sink much of our 
personal good into the common good. We 
must give up some of our personal rights 
if we would relate ourselves to the larger 
community. 

Personal liberty may be clung to long 
after it should have been lost in the com- 
mon good. Our personal rights end where 
our neighbors' rights begin. I must forego 
doing many things I might do if I lived 
alone. If I live in the thick fellowship of 
others, I must consider their rights. It is 
the recognition of this principle which 
compels modern statesmen to minify the 
rights of any one State in order to magnify 
the rights of all the States. 

The principle of ^'States' rights" pushed 
to the extent of that held by the statesmen 
of the nineteenth century, is an anachron- 
ism to-day in the twentieth century. Our 
rapid means of intercommunication, our 

[151] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

telegraphs, telephones, railroads, airships, 
and wireless telegraphy have made inter- 
state commerce compulsory. To-day com- 
merce should be as little trammeled by 
State lines as by county lines. 

We are now a Nation and not simply a 
Confederation of States. We have a new 
nationalism. The modern patriot thinks 
first of the Nation. We must think in na- 
tional terms, and legislate for all our people 
and not simply for some section. And 
when all men everywhere come fully to 
recognize God as the common Father of 
all the children of men, and Jesus Christ 
the Elder Brother of all humanity, then 
will men everywhere have grown tall enough 
to look over their national boundary lines and 
regard the whole earth as belonging to their 
family, while their patriotism is vast enough 
to include the wide earth which their God 
has created and their Savior redeemed. 



[152] 



A Man's Maiden 

It was because Esther was fairer and 
better behaved than all the other maidens 
brought before the king that she was 
chosen to be queen, and thereby became 
the savior of her people. The king had 
been charmed by her maidenly virtues. 

It is so with every manly man. He is 
attracted by worth as well as beauty. 
Every normal man enjoys fellowship. It is 
natural to be with kindred spirits. It is a 
bad sign for a young man to hold himself 
aloof from other young men. The average 
boy likes to belong to a ''gang.'' Boys like 
games which require team-work. ''Soli- 
taire'' never appeals to a boy nor to a 
young man. Lonely women and crabbed 
old men may amuse themselves in that way; 
but normal men want to be with folks. 

Not only is the normal man anxious to 
[153] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

enjoy the fellowship of men, but he es- 
pecially enjoys the companionship of 
women. This disposition shows itself very 
early in the life of a boy. It is quite gen- 
erally known that a man passes through 
five distinct periods in his relation to the 
opposite sex. Up to about eight years, a 
boy forms attachments for girls of his own 
age, with whom he plays on the same terms 
as with boys. He has no self -consciousness, 
no sex-consciousness. They play together 
in utter abandon. Gifts are exchanged be- 
tween them, and their relations are without 
emb arr assmen t . 

Then follows a second period, from 
eight to twelve or fourteen, when a boy 
begins to show particular interest in some 
one girl. He is no longer unconscious of his 
relation to her. He is shy. He bestows his 
gifts secretly. He follows her at a distance. 
There is no lip-confession of his love, but 
all who observe may know in what direc- 
tion his preferences lie. There is confusion 
in each other's society. They want to be 
together, but at such times there is little 
[154] 



A MAN'S MAIDEN 

liberty of speech. When the boy's elders 
begin to tease him about "his girl," he im- 
mediately repudiates her, and would rather 
lose her friendship than be made the subject 
of jesting on her account. For he has great 
fear of ridicule. The boy at this stage is 
very fond of games. Babcock, the psychol- 
ogist, says that of eighty-three played by 
the boys and girls in Washington, D. C, 
he discovered that thirty of them were 
''love-games." At this stage the girl of the 
same age is more bold and less guarded 
than the boy. The boy's best way to let 
it be known where his preference lies is to 
''show oflf" before her. He delights in dis- 
playing for her his prowess. He would be 
an athletic hero. He struts and becomes a 
"smart Alec." He deceives no one of ex- 
perience. He is expressing his callow love. 

Then from twelve to eighteen he is 
very apt to have a new love for one older 
than himself. She often is his teacher, or 
an older sister's chum. 

Then follows that period in his growth 
when he experiences new sensations and 
[155] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

aspirations. Strange to say, there springs 
up often an aversion to the opposite sex. 
He does not seek her society. He thinks 
often of her when alone, but does not feel 
content or at ease in her company. 

At last, at full maturity, he becomes the 
normal man, and finds joy and inspiration 
when in the society of good and pure 
women. 

Every man is the better for his com- 
panionship with good women. No man can 
become a well-rounded man until qualities 
are cultivated in him which can only grow 
in the society of a good woman. The badge 
of a true gentleman is found in his courteous 
treatment of women. Men are more or 
less gruff and bluff in their fellowship with 
each other. But in the society of women 
each feels himself under bond to be gentle 
and kindly, and show them every possible 
courtesy. He learns to think less of his 
own ease and pleasure, and to be alert in 
the interest of others. Every true man 
sinks all thought of himself in his purpose 
to make the opposite sex comfortable and 
[156] 



A MAN'S MAIDEN 

happy. No man, abounding in selfishness, 
can make any woman happy. Selfishness 
is the explanation of many a bachelor. 

The companionship of women also 
teaches a man self-control. He feels he 
must keep a guard over his life. He must 
think twice before he speaks. Good society 
puts under the ban the man who shows his 
temper in the company of ladies. Many a 
man, lacking that supply of divine grace 
which God freely gives to all who ask it, 
finds his only restraint upon his speech and 
temper in the society of the opposite sex. 
When a man has for a friend a woman who 
is no restraint upon his conduct or speech, 
he is cursed rather than blessed by such a 
friendship. Nothing is so damnatory as the 
friendship of a woman who has no restrain- 
ing influence on lip or life. 

The ability to participate in a pure con- 
versation is one of the surest marks of a 
true gentleman. Recently a man in my 
presence started to express his indignation 
over a matter which deeply stirred him, 
and then stopped suddenly, and said, ''I 
[157] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

can not properly express myself in your 
presence/' He had so accustomed himself 
to the use of profanity that he did not dare 
trust himself to speak out his mind in the 
presence of a Christian. How could a man 
like that be at ease in the society of refined 
women? One must learn how^ to keep his 
lips clean and his thought pure if he is to 
enjoy the companionshop of a good woman. 

To be the good companion of a good 
woman is to be a chivalric knight. All the 
nobler and kinglier qualities of his manhood 
are constantly appealed to when a man is 
in the society of women. He thinks first 
of their comfort. He forgets self in their 
defense. He protects the weakest woman, 
not only from insult and assault from other 
men, but especially from himself. His 
chivalric soul keeps inviolate the reputation 
and character of the woman who places 
herself under his protecting care. No man 
is so foul as he who betrays the woman who 
trusts him. 

All these virtues are bred in the genial 
and kindly atmosphere where pure woman- 
[158] 



A MAN'S MAIDEN 

hood dwells. Every true man treats every 
woman as he would have his sister treated 
by true men everywhere. 

The honest man despises hypocrisy and 
mere pretending. There is a hypocrisy 
other than that so frequently displayed in 
religious matters. It is the dishonest intent 
of appearing better off than one really is. 
It is the attempt to make it appear that 
one is what he is not. This has proved the 
ruin of many a youth. He has lived beyond 
his income. He has worn better clothes 
than he could afford. He has run in debt 
to purchase gifts. He has ridden in car- 
riages when he should have walked. He 
has played a miserable part. He has 
sought to gain friendship under false pre- 
tenses. It always ends in disaster. 

It is a rare art in a man to maintain the 
relation of pure friendship with a woman. 
It is not necessary that matrimony should 
be regarded as the necessary goal of all 
friendships between a man and w^oman. A 
noble-minded man and an equally noble- 
minded woman may know the strength and 

[159] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

charm of a friendship based on much of 
value that they hold in common, and yet 
never feel that such friendship must flower 
into matrimony. It would be a sorry and 
ill-sorted world if there were to be no such 
friendship. It is a low and suspicious 
mind which can not conceive such a friend- 
ship. Every man is rich who possesses even 
one such woman as a friend. 

Young women should not regard every 
young man who pays her any attention as 
a possible husband. Nothing is more ad- 
mirable in a young woman than her capacity 
for unselfish friendship with numerous 
young men. It is beautiful and chivalric in 
a man to possess that quality of genuine 
friendship which enables him to find joy 
and real strength in the fellowship of many 
women who find in him the qualities of a 
true brother, so that between them there 
may grow up a friendship unalloyed with 
ulterior motive, and free from all suspicion 
of mere personal interest. 

We have in the social life of Jesus a fine 
model and example. What a commentary 

[160] 



A MAN'S MAIDEN 

on His character is the quahty of His 
friendships ! His boundless sympathy alone 
can explain the wide range of His friend- 
ships. He was the friend of woman. He 
emancipated her. No man who ever lived 
did so much for womankind. Other re- 
ligious leaders and teachers either debased 
or ignored her. See what place woman oc- 
cupies in society under any other religion, 
and then compare it with her place in 
Christian civilization, and you will discover 
what has been the influence of Jesus upon 
woman. His civilization has been made 
possible by the place in it given to woman. 
He respected woman. His only earthly 
contact with the human race was through 
a woman. He had no earthly father. 

Read His life with the purpose of noting 
how He treated women. You will discover 
how pure and intimate were those rela- 
tions. His purity attracted good women. 
It did not repel bad women. Even the 
common woman of the town dared ap- 
proach Him with hope. She knew He was 
no Pharisee. His goodness was the kind 
11 [ 161 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

that was patient with badness. Sinful men 
would have stoned her to death. Jesus had 
words of sympathy and pardon for her. 
His treatment of a Samaritan woman of 
bad reputation is the fine expression of a 
good man's consciousness of his own in- 
tegrity. 

Bad women instinctively know the men 
to whom their own badness may have an 
appeal. A bad woman shrinks in the pres- 
ence of a good man. But there was some- 
thing in Jesus besides His moral purity 
which offered hope and help for even a 
sinful woman. Virtue flowed from Him so 
strongly that He could come in contact 
with the vicious without becoming tainted. 
His goodness was mightier than others' 
badness. It is so to-day. Jesus can walk 
among the vilest and still be good. Even 
yet may Magdalenes bathe His feet with 
their tears and wipe them with their hair 
and hear His voice of love and pardon. 

And so to-day every man who has 
Christ's spirit and seeks to be like Him, 
should be a blessed benediction on the life 
[162] 



A MAN'S MAIDEN 

of every woman whom he knows. She 
should regard him as a tower of strength 
and a refuge. To him she should feel she 
could go in any hour of her need, and feel 
that he will not violate her confidence nor 
take advantage of her need. No man is 
quite so vile as he who betrays the confi- 
dence reposed in him by a trusting woman. 

For a man to receive under his protec- 
tion a woman who trusts him, and then 
injure her, is too base for human society. 
There is nothing finer than all that is high 
and noble in a man rising to meet the 
appeals of innocence and dependence. Note 
well the "way of a man with a maid,'' and 
you can judge his character. 

Jesus Christ is no model for husbands, 
for He never was married. But He is a 
beautiful model for every man in his rela- 
tion to mother, sister, and friend. His de- 
votion to His mother is an example for all 
sons. His last dying thought was for her. 
He w^as the welcome guest in every home. 
Mary and Martha, of Bethany, found in 
Him a true Friend in the days of their joy 
[163] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

and in the time of their deepest grief. He 
was every woman's Big Brother. The 
spiritual Mary, the practical Martha, and 
even the outcast harlot, felt that she had 
in Him a true friend, indeed. 

The disinterested friendship which a 
good man may have for a good woman is 
one of the fair fruits of Christianity. When 
men everywhere come to look upon every 
woman as a sister, and feel themselves 
bound by Christian chivalry to befriend 
and protect her, then will the ills which 
destroy domestic felicity and ruin the lives 
of so many fair women be eradicated, and 
the sweet joys of heaven will be shed abroad 
upon all the children of men. 



[164] 



A Man's Wife 

The most holy and intimate relationship 
should exist between a man and his wife. 
In the Christian world there is known no 
more sacred union than that which exists 
between Christ and His Church. He loved 
it unto the death, giving His life for it. 
He still loves it. He calls it His Bride. 
He took the holy relationship which He 
sustains toward His Church and used it 
as a symbol of the holy bond which unites 
man and woman in holy matrimony. 

Hence the finest and noblest thing a 
man can do is to marry some worthy 
woman. When two souls are thus mated, 
the only thing worthy of symbolizing that 
union is the intimate love between Christ 
and His Church. The ceremony binding 
thus together for life two loving hearts 
is so holy that I do not wonder that the 
[165] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

mistake has been made of regarding it as 
a sacrament. 

If there could be any other sacrament 
than the two ordained by our Lord — bap- 
tism and the Lord's Supper — surely it 
would be matrimony. And yet how 
thoughtlessly men and women rush into 
it, without investigation, without real love, 
without prayer. The bond is sealed by 
the mere utterance of some legal phrase, 
uttered too often by some ungodly civil 
official. _Most divorces come from such 
marriages. 

The disgrace of our American civiliza- 
tion is the divorce mill, which grinds out 
in any one city each year more divorces 
than any European nation would grant in 
a decade. There is no legislation so much 
needed as a uniform divorce law, operat- 
ing in all the States of the Union, and 
greatly reducing the number of legal grounds 
for divorce. To-day giddy youth and evil 
men and women are practically acting on 
the theory of ^Hrial marriages.'' They say 
they will get married, and if they do not 

[166] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

like it will get divorced and try it again. 
Such practices are a disgrace to a so-called 
Christian civilization. 

Marriage is the normal state. When 
mature men and women do not marry, 
there are abnormal causes preventing. 
There may be physical, mental, or moral 
impediments to matrimony. Otherwise 
every man should have a wife. 

Matrimony is the divinely ordained 
state in which the race is to be continued. 
It is only in this orderly and beautiful rela- 
tionship that a worthy offspring can be 
secured. God has ^'set the solitary in 
families,'' and children are to have the 
training which only can be secured in a 
home where father and mother love each 
other and are true to their marriage vows. 

It is vitally important that every indi- 
vidual should have some one intimate com- 
panion. No one life is complete in itself. 
It needs its complement, its mate. Mar- 
riage is a deep-seated need of men. Each 
feels the hunger of a soul-mate. Each 
finds strength and joy in another's fellow- 
[167] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

ship. Men and women are as vitally es- 
sential to each other as a bird's right wing 
is essential to its left. 

It is the counsel and cheer that one 
soul imparts to another that makes life 
bright and strong. A man may have 
many friends, but he can have only one 
true wife. In her he finds a companion- 
ship that no one else nor any company can 
provide. She becomes his other self. In 
her and through her he comes the better 
to know himself, his strength, and his lim- 
itations. She becomes his best critic and 
best supporter. The two lives become so 
overlapped and interlaced that each finds 
the other essential to the best efficiency and 
happiness. No man's life is well rounded 
which lacks the intimate companionship 
which only a true wife can give. 

Not the individual but the family is 
the unit in human society. There can be 
no genuine family life without a home. 
The stability of the marriage state and 
of the civil government rests upon the 
home. A nation without homes is a rope 
[168] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

of sand. You will be convinced of this if 
you will study the interior life of the nations 
of the world. You will discover that the 
government is strong and enduring in pro- 
portion to the strength of the home life 
of the people. Look at Germany and 
England, and then look at Turkey or 
India. 

Any law on the statute books, any 
religious belief, any cost of living, any style 
of architecture which minifies the sacred- 
ness, the privacy, or the permanence of the 
homes of the people is a decided menace 
to the perpetuity of that nation. 

'^ Marriage is honorable among all men, 
and is therefore not to be entered into 
unadvisedly, but reverently, discreetly, and 
in the fear of God,'' because matrimony is 
the soil in which alone can grow some of 
the fairest virtues which adorn human char- 
acter. There are many qualities which 
only a true husband and father can ever 
acquire. There are womanly virtues which 
only a devoted wife and mother can ever 
possess. 

[169] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

The fairest and most Christly fruits in 
a human life can only germinate and flour- 
ish in the lives of men and women who 
dwell together in the bonds of holy wed- 
lock. There is a psychological and moral 
explanation of the instinctive discount 
which is placed on what we call an "old 
bachelor'' or an ''old maid/' The unmar- 
ried should not be condemned, for many a 
tragedy is connected with the life of the 
so-called ''old maid." Her very singleness 
of life may be the badge of her noble self- 
abasement and devotion to others. But, 
after all that has been granted, it remains 
true that out of such a life have been kept 
some of the fairest virtues which can adorn 
human life. 

Let me repeat that every normal man 
under normal conditions should be mar- 
ried, because he thus puts himself in har- 
mony with the divine plan for the per- 
petuity of the race. Thereby he also secures 
that one intimate companion whom his 
nature craves and needs. He further adds 
to the stability of the social fabric by es- 
[170] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

tablishing a home, which is the essential 
unit of society and the very foundation of 
the State. And then he cultivates those 
virtues which can only be grown in the 
character of him who loves and sacrifices. 

I have a well established conviction that 
every man should marry and settle in life 
just as soon as the law will permit and he is 
able to support a wife and family. When 
I say ''able to support a wife and family/' 
I wish to make it clear that I do not sympa- 
thize with the modern notion, too widely 
current, that a man must be able to begin 
married life where his parents left off. In 
other words, it is folly for a man to say, 
''I can not afford to marry until I can set 
up a home as well ordered and equipped as 
my father's, or as full of comforts as the 
home of the parents of my would-be 
bride." 

Many an honest young fellow ought to 
be settled in his own modest home, who will 
tell you that he dares not ask a girl to live 
with him in a home so much less com- 
fortable and beautiful than the one she 
[171] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

must leave when she becomes his wife. 
I am convinced that the daughter of many 
a rich man would gladly live with the man 
of her love, even though his home would 
be far poorer than the one she left. We 
undervalue the true worth and nobility of 
the average American girl when we assume 
that she loves luxury and ease more than 
her own home in the companionship of the 
man she loves. 

There should be forethought and serious 
consideration of all that marriage implies 
in the way of expense and sacrifice. Care- 
ful calculation should be made as to one's 
ability to maintain, in proper ways, a 
household. But many a youth is falsely 
concluding that he can not afford to marry, 
when, with proper economy, wise planning, 
and the abandonment of all foolish selfish- 
ness, he could marry some worthy woman 
and set up his own household. 

Youth is the best time to begin the 

married life. I could argue this from 

economic, from physiological, and from 

social principles which are involved in the 

[ 172 ] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

problem. But this is not the time nor the 
place to employ such arguments. But I 
may surely and safely dwell upon the 
value of an early marriage on the ground 
that a man will be saved from many an ill 
and evil thing. A man is less likely to sow 
that useless seed which always bears a 
harvest — namely, wild oats. Many a youth 
has gone to an early and dishonored grave 
because he sowed wild oats. An early and 
honorable marriage might have saved him. 
You have heard the conundrum, ^'Why 
do married people live longer than single 
people?" The answer given is, ''They 
don't; it only seems longer.'' Of course, 
some old bachelor invented that joke, and 
it always provokes merriment wherever it 
is perpetrated. But the real truth is that 
married people do live longer than single, 
as proved by the best life- tables. There 
are full and sufficient reasons why people 
living the normal, loving, and helpful mar- 
ried life should be saved from many an 
ill which is a menace and a destroyer of 
life. 

[ 173 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

I might add, in brief, that early mar- 
riages conduce to the acquirement of habits 
of economy, and the young people more 
readily adjust themselves to the require- 
ments of the married state than old people 
whose habits have become fixed, whose 
selfishness has become confirmed, whose 
opinions have crystallized, and whose very 
forms of speech have been stereotyped. 

It is not for any man to tell another 
who his wife shall be. It is one of the finer 
exhibitions of the divine goodness that the 
Creator of us all has not given to all men 
alike the same ideals of womanly perfec- 
tion. It would be awful to contemplate 
the dire consequences had it been ordained 
otherwise. Each has his own ideal, and 
thank God! there is a ^^ Jack for every Jill." 
There is no woman so unattractive that 
she may not receive favor in some man's 
eyes. 

Yet in a Christian land, with our Chris- 
tian ideals and standards, with a morality 
growing out of a deep-seated demand of 
the human soul, and not dependent upon 
[174] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

mere matters of convention, one may 
safely mention certain qualities which 
should be the fine possession of any woman 
who is worthy to command and hold the 
love and loyalty of a worthy and noble 
man. I am assuming that the man is 
worthy. I heard a college boy once cata- 
logue the virtues of the woman whom he 
would marry. When he was done, a young 
chap spoke up and said: ''Great Csesar, 
man! what do you expect to give in ex- 
change.?'' It may be of interest for me to 
tell you that after the lapse of more than 
thirty years that young fellow, now gray 
and bald, is still unmarried. 

I feel sure that every true man will be 
willing to admit that he desires his wife to 
have good health. He wants her to be as 
well or better educated than himself. He 
knows the value of common sense in a 
woman and prizes it more than beauty of 
person. He requires that she shall be like 
Csesar's wife, ''above suspicion" in all 
matters involving the integrity of her mar- 
riage vows and her own private life. He 
[175] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

would be proud to observe in her an eco- 
nomical quality which would aid him in 
his plans to live within his income. He 
will hail with joy her industry, and thank 
God daily if he has not secured a lazy wife. 
He will be proud to boast that his wife 
loves home more than the pleasures of the 
outside world. He will count himself the 
most blessed of mortals if his wife is good- 
natured and never pouts nor scolds. Above 
all, he will discover his real treasure in 
her when he finds that she is generously 
unselfish, for the root of nearly every 
family trouble, the cause of most divorces, 
and the ruin of the best homes can be 
traced to selfishness. A selfish wife is 
a slumbering volcano underneath every 
hearthstone. Any hour may witness an 
eruption which will burst into fragments 
the sacredest and finest home ever founded. 
There can be no permanent happiness 
where selfishness breeds envy, suspicion, 
and jealousy. Then home ceases to be 
like heaven, and grows more and more like 
hell 

[176] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

The Bible says that ''the husband is 
the head of the wife, even as Christ is the 
head of the Church/' Husbands are ad- 
monished to ''love their wives, even as 
Christ also loved the Church and gave 
Himself for it." When such a relation as 
that exists between a man and woman, 
there will be no quarreling over who is to 
be the superior. Each will treat the other 
as an equal, never as an inferior or a slave. 

Marriage, under Christianity, is a far 
nobler institution than under any other 
form of religion. Under Mohammed only 
men worship and attend the mosque. A 
woman is hardly thought to possess a soul. 
Christ has exalted womanhood to her right- 
ful place by the side of her husband, and 
whatever may be said about Biblical admo- 
nitions concerning wives submitting them- 
selves in obedience to their husbands, it is 
never to be inferred that she does so as his 
intellectual or moral inferior; and the prac- 
tical working out of the scheme under Chris- 
tian influences has produced a type of wom- 
anhood infinitely above that found beyond 
12 [ 177 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

the pale of Christendom, A Christian hus- 
band treats his wife as his equal, and gives 
her the supreme place in his affections. 

Husbands should never be less courteous 
after marriage than they were before. The 
basis of many a marital infelicity may be 
traced to discourtesy on the part of one or 
both of the married couple. Why should 
a man be less attentive and courtly to the 
woman who loves him best of all the world 
than to any other woman .'^ No measure 
of intimacy and mutual understanding can 
excuse a man for being discourteous to his 
wife. 

A husband should treat his wife with 
open frankness. There should be no with- 
holding of confidences. I do not mean that 
a man may not know some things he need 
not tell his wife — things which she does 
not need to know, nor would the knowing 
of them conduce to her happiness. He 
knows many things she does not, and she 
is the better for it. She knows many things 
he does not, and he is the better for it. 

But in all those affairs in which both are 
[178] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

mutually interested, such as the financial 
ability of the husband, and his whereabouts 
and hers, there should be the utmost frank- 
ness. Many a family has been wrecked 
because the wife has not been honestly 
dealt with by her husband in matters of 
money. She has been blindly and inno- 
cently extravagant. She did not know that 
her husband could not afford the luxuries 
she purchased. He ought to have told her. 
He was a coward not to. He owed it to 
her to do her the honor of assuming that 
she would do what was right, and control 
her expenses to proportions within his in- 
come. Possibly more domestic troubles 
grow out of the lack of the fullest confi- 
dences in those matters where both are 
equally interested, than from any other 
cause. "I keep nothing from my wife,'' 
is the invariable explanation of the beauti- 
ful marital felicity which charms all who 
are happy enough to behold it. 

Every wife has the same right to expect 
absolute loyalty and fidelity from her hus- 
band as he has to expect them from her. 
[179] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

God and decent men know no double stand- 
ard of morality. There is but one standard 
of morality for both sexes. No man dare 
demand of woman a moral standard of 
conduct by which he himself is not willing 
to be measured. 

Happy the husband who never ceases 
to treat his wife like the sweetheart whom 
he married. When the loving word is only 
to be taken for granted without speaking 
it; when the kindly caress is withheld be- 
cause it has become too common; when the 
encouraging thing is no longer done be- 
cause it has grown irksome, then a loving 
heart is starved for lack of that upon which 
it lives. There will be no need of divorce 
court for the man who continues to tell his 
wife he loves her; who assures her that no 
one else in all the world is quite so beauti- 
ful to his eyes; who continues to think of 
her as one who loves flowers and loves best 
to receive them from him whom she loves 
most; who does not cease to present her 
with little personal gifts for her own private 
use and pleasure. 

[180] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

I have known an awkward husband to 
present his wife with a Christmas present 
of a new^ cook-stove, and then wonder why 
she did not see how much he loved her. 
One httle flower for her own hair from the 
man who loved her would have warmed 
and fed her heart more than if he had 
spent thousands on articles for the common 
use of the whole household. 

It is a husband's task not to lose the 
love of his wife when he becomes a father. 
It was said recently of a husband and wife 
that the wife's love for her husband had 
been transferred to the baby, and the hus- 
band's love had been transferred to the 
nurse. When a wife comes to love her 
children so much that she loves her hus- 
band less, there is a growing tragedy com- 
ing to the crisis in that home. 

I close by saying that a man owes it to 
his wife to help her in her religious life. 
And yet how often he hinders her. He 
thinks he is generous when he asserts that 
he does not interfere with his wife in mat- 
ters of religion. He lets her go to church! 
[181] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

Magnanimous man! But he never joins 
her in prayer. He never goes with her to 
church. He never strengthens her in her 
hours of trial. He leaves to her the re- 
ligious nurture of his children. She often 
must seek to perform the heart-breaking 
task of explaining to her boy how it comes 
that her moral standard is so far removed 
from his father's practice. The father, by 
his example, undoes the best ethical teach- 
ing of the faithful mother. He jokingly 
says his religion is in his wife's name. He 
does not see the meanness and cowardice 
in the statement. The poor little wife 
must all alone struggle to maintain her 
Christian life, train properly the little ones, 
meet her religious obligations, and all the 
time never receive one word of encourage- 
ment, nor be helped by one act of his. 

O, the sad pathos of it! A true woman, 
struggling to be loyal to her God and true 
to her own high ideals, and yet compelled 
to live with the man she loves and never 
have his sympathetic help in the matter 
that lies nearest her heart! 
[ 182 ] 



A MAN'S WIFE 

O you husbands who boast that you 
love your wives, and that you are ^' good pro- 
viders/' why will you not make your Chris- 
tian wives happy in the way which they 
will prize above all others? Join them in 
their purpose to be Christians. Live prayer- 
ful lives. Help give religious training to 
your children. Join with her the Church 
of your choice. Let the Christ hallow and 
sanctify your domestic love and make 
eternal the holy bond that binds you. 
Take wife and all the children home to 
heaven with you. 

Be a man. Cease to be a moral coward. 
Have the courage to do your duty. Bring 
a new joy into your home by welcoming 
the Christ. Your home will then become 
a foretaste of heaven! 



[183] 



A Man's Life 

The devil says that ''every man has his 
price.'' That is not true. Men, for honor's 
sake, for country, for home, for loved ones, 
for a principle, have died rather than pay 
the required price to live. 

The statement is near enough true to 
illustrate the value every thoughtful person 
should put on his own life. For a man's 
life is his great gift from God. It is God's 
projffer of a great opportunity to be some 
one worth while, and to do something which 
may bless his fellow-men. However right 
or wrong we are in the matter, we in- 
stinctively feel that there has been a great 
loss when a young life ends abruptly. We 
feel that all the vast possibilities of that 
life have been nipped in the bud. But 
surely God may have other and larger 
fields for the development of a life than this 
one here of which we are a part. I some- 
[184] 



A MAN'S LIFE 

times fancy that the infant-dead will some 
day show us that they have far outstripped 
us both in the development of their own 
characters and the sort of service they 
have rendered. 

And yet we rightly value this present 
time as our chance to make most out of 
life. Here and now we are to grow a soul 
which will in some small way be worthy of 
its Creator and Redeemer. In this present 
life we are given the great honor of so using 
our powers that they may contribute to 
the good and gladness of our fellows. It 
would be a great day if all who dwell on 
earth were suddenly to realize the value 
of life, both to one's self and others. If we 
all could clearly discern the value of such 
opportunities, how beauty and strength 
would grow in the world! But ^'opportu- 
nities do not come with values stamped 
on them." If they did we would not be 
so careless of them. Few appreciate the 
values of opportunities. The great mass of 
men merely exist. They are living so low 
down and near to the hard struggle for 
[185] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

mere existence, that they have Httle or no 
thought for the higher and finer things of 
hfe. The ''bread-and-butter battle'' is so 
fierce that they have left little time or 
energy for anything else. The darkest 
tragedy in the world is the necessity which 
drags souls down to the low plane of mere 
bodily existence in which there is no thought 
given to the clamorous demands of the 
higher life; or, worse still, so deadened and 
saddened by the sordid life of merely 
fleshly pursuits that all the higher calls of 
the spirit are wholly silenced. 

With the vast multitude, their lives 
have no program. A noble life is like a 
noble building. It needs an architect. 
Any man with meager equipment can con- 
struct a sty. You need an architect to 
build a temple. Each of us is left to be the 
architect of his own life, the builder of his 
own temple. So many of us are so occu- 
pied with the commonplaces, that there need 
be no wonder that so many of us build 
sties instead of temples. 

We are so situated in the world that 
[186] 



A MAN'S LIFE 

much of our life must be given over to the 
needs of the body. CHmate makes heavy 
demands for clothing and shelter. Hunger 
and thirst call loudly for satisfaction. We 
all are shocked whenever we pause and 
recall how much of our day has been spent 
wholly upon our mere bodies. Our tasks 
involve only the interests of our physical 
life. We live almost entirely for the grat- 
ification of our five physical senses. We 
yield ourselves to the urgent claims upon 
us in order that we may simply keep our 
souls inside our bodies. 

We go into the unconsciousness of sleep 
for eight hours daily in order that we may 
be refreshed to give the remaining hours of 
the day to the pursuit of our physical 
needs. We need to bring ourselves up 
squarely before the higher demands of our 
mental and spiritual natures. We must 
insist that our minds shall have a chance. 
We must take time from daily tasks that 
afford us a living, and give it to the things 
that make a life. 

Every earnest man will find time for 
[187] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

the cultivation of his mind. In these days 
of the printing-press, with its inexpensive 
output of paper, magazine, and book, we 
must create a hunger for knowledge, if we 
do not already have it, and satisfy it, if we 
know its cravings, in order that we may 
live on a plane above the mere existence of 
the brute. 

We should know that the physical 
senses are only highways along which 
should be carried those sensations which 
contribute to the higher delights of the 
mind and heart. 

Just as surely as water will not slake 
the thirst of the mind for knowledge, so 
will not the intellectual victories meet the 
aspirations of the spirit. The broad life 
of every earnest man must have in its pro- 
gram some provision for the soul. My own 
heart has grown sad at the sight of a great 
multitude of men intensely interested in 
rates and per cents which aflFected their 
business, and yet who were wholly indiflFer- 
ent to the finer feats of the mind and the 
limitless reaches of the spirit. A man's 

[188] 



A MAN'S LIFE 

life may be full of the commonplace, and 
yet he must not conclude that it is there- 
fore incapable of genuine greatness or use- 
fulness. The common tasks are necessary, 
and hence are honorable. Nothing that 
needs to be done is necessarily mean. 
Everything hinges on the spirit in which 
it is done. The noblest of characters may 
be produced by the faithful performance 
of the common tasks of life. Great men 
are not great because they have done some 
one great thing; but because they have 
been faithful in many little things. Men 
of known greatness have simply had the 
occasion for displaying their greatness. 
The occasion did not make them great. 
They were great without the occasion. The 
mother of one of our modern heroes is 
reported to have said when the world 
applauded the great deed of her son: "I 
am not surprised. It was just like him." 
There are many others just as great as 
any whose names are on the scroll of fame, 
who are wholly unknown, unhonored, and 
unsung. The world may never hear of 
[189] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

their worth. God knows them. He is 
rich in great lives; although the conspic- 
uously great are so few. God has always 
had a great man for a great place at a 
great hour. The occasion only brings 
them to notice. Great men are now living 
ready to emerge above the common level 
of human society when God calls for them. 
The level of humanity has vastly lifted 
since Moses' day, and yet if God deeds a 
man to rise above the level of our modern 
humanity, he will be found to stand up 
as tall as did Moses above his fellows. 

The chief thing in life is to be great 
rather than to appear great. Far better 
be fitted for a noble place, though you 
never may be called to fill it, than to have 
a high place for which you have no fitness. 
I am insisting that you must not think 
meanly of your life because it is obscure. 
Your ancestry may not have had its deeds 
recorded in the annals of history. You 
may have been reared amid homely sur- 
roundings. Your work may be such as to 
possess little to mark it apart from the 
[190] 



A MAN'S LIFE 

work of others. When your work is done, 
it may look like any other stone placed in 
the wall or foundation. And yet if it be 
falsely laid it may doom the whole fabric 
to speedy ruin. 

The splendor of the carved spire and 
gilded finial, which loom so high and 
beautiful above the building, will fall in 
crashing ruin if the stones in the wall or 
foundation shall be weak and crumble. 

These human standards are very tem- 
porary. This world's honors are very 
uncertain and often very unfairly awarded. 
This old world has crowned some strange 
cattle. Think of Charles I and Leo X, 
and thank God you have the honor of 
being respected as a decent man. Think 
of Catherine of Russia, and again thank 
God that you are a human woman. The 
value to the tree is the vast unnumbered 
leafage which insure growth, beauty, and 
health to it. One topmost leaf may catch 
some splendor of color, but the real value 
of the tree is not in it. 

The value of the army is in the great 
[191] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

mass of its soldiers, who carry guns that 
can be fired. There is value in the officer, 
with his plan and his plumes, and his 
swinging sword, but the battle is fought 
and won by the obscure privates, who, 
when dead and buried, may have only a 
number on their headstones. 

God knows the value of the obscure 
and He keeps a record, and He notes the 
sparrow's fall, and will see to it that in the 
final and eternal awarding no worthy soul 
shall be obscure. The great of earth fall 
to the dead level of all who are mortal. 
The great of heaven will rise to deserved dis- 
tinction, regardless of their earthly standing. 

Think not merely of your life because 
you are not learned in the schools. Do not 
wear forever an apologetic look because you 
are not college-bred. Boast not that you 
are successful without a college training. 
That is a bumptiousness which makes you 
look pitiful, even though you are rich and 
are proud of your ignorance. But if you 
find yourself now lacking a college training, 
whatever may have been the cause of your 
[192] 



A MAN^S LIFE 

deprivation, acknowledge that it is loss 
and deprivation, yet do not discount your- 
self and write yourself down as mean and 
unworthy. It may be that even yet you 
may secure the equivalent of a college edu- 
cation. Improve your spare moments, and 
you will be surprised what heights of ig- 
norance you may surmount, and to what 
delights of knowledge and increased use- 
fulness you may attain. 

Think not meanly of yourself because 
you are not rich. All can not be and all 
do not care to be. Many have not time to 
be. They are engaged in bigger business. 
You may belong to such as have no money- 
making faculty; just as you may belong 
to the company who can not compose a 
symphony, write a poem, carve a statue, or 
paint a picture. God gives various talents 
to His children. Do not show your evil 
spirit by despising an art of which you are 
ignorant. Do not display an envious and 
little soul by attempting to pour contempt 
upon riches. You, too, might be rich if 
you only knew how. 

13 [ 193 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

But this is my warning. Do not think 
meanly of yourself because you are poor. 
I have known men and women who proudly 
held up their heads and moved with grace 
among their fellow-men when they were 
rich enough to live sumptuously and ex- 
travagantly. And then when some re- 
verses of fortune swept away their money, 
they were unable to hold up their heads 
in company. They shunned church and 
society. They acted as if they really 
thought that all there was to them which 
was worth while was their money; as if 
their only claim to recognition was their 
ability to spend. Now that they are poor, 
they have lost their self-respect, and keep 
themselves away from former friends and 
circles. 

Do not think that your claim to rec- 
ognition is in the style of your garments 
or the place where you live. I know people 
who can not put two good English sen- 
tences together in conversation, who think 
they are quite distinguished, and yet who 
would consider themselves disgraced if 
[194 ] 



A MAN'S LIFE 

they appeared in a decent-looking hat or 
an unfashionable gown. 

I call on all who hear me to help create 
in this land a true standard of worth. 
England's aristocracy of birth is not half 
so mean and foolish as America's aristoc- 
racy of money. In some quarters of Amer- 
ica we have an aristocracy of brains, which 
is a better thing than either. But the best 
aristocracy is the aristocracy of character. 
True moral worth is the highest aristocracy. 
To it the humblest of us may belong. 
No accident of birth, no unfortunate sur- 
rounding can keep us from such nobility. 
Have self-respect. Remember whose child 
you are. God is your Father. Hold up 
your head. Let no man insult your dig- 
nity. 

What are you doing with your life? 
Are you making the most of it.? Have you 
as good a body as you ought to have.? It 
may be you are slouchy and awkward and 
needlessly ugly. You may not give enough 
thought to your body. You dwell in it. 
It is your earthly home. Clean it up and 

[195] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

make it beautiful. What kind of a mind 
have you? Are you making the most of it? 

Your Hfe largely hinges on the character 
of your thinking. The man who knows 
has the advantage in life. Ignorance is 
the rock on which many a life is wrecked. 

Your life might be given to some splen- 
did service and compensation if you would 
give your evenings for the next four years 
to some course of study in night-school. 
Your life is worth it. Qualify, by intel- 
lectual training, for the best. 

What are you doing for your spirit? 
Within it are the possibilities which make 
life finest. Have you opened the windows 
of your soul? Are you living only in the 
cellar of your life? Let your life be lived 
in the higher levels of your spirit. You 
are something more than an animal or an 
intellectual machine. Your life will take 
on true value when lived in the higher 
atmospheres where dwell the purest springs 
of human action. 

Do not waste your life. There are so 
many temptations to do so. A thousand 
[196] 



A MAN'S LIFE 

voices call you into waste places which 
promise pleasures, but which are banefully 
barren. Live for the best. Give your life 
where it will do the most lasting good. 
Do not be satisfied with pumping wind 
into an organ with a handle, if you have 
the ability to sit at its keyboard and un- 
loose the divine harmonies. Do not be 
satisfied with the mere making of a living 
— that is, keeping the soul in the body; 
but be ambitious to fit the soul for fairer 
habitation and loftier living. Dedicate 
your life to the highest. Give it to God. 
There is nothing this side of His heart 
big enough and worthy enough for you to 
squander your life on. He only is big 
enough to command the awful wealth of 
your life. 

One day at sea our ship came up to a 
floating wreck, whose deck was being 
swept by a rolling sea, and the wheel was 
lashed. Not a man in sight. It had been 
abandoned by the men, or they had per- 
ished in the storm. Only a little black 
dog survived, and he was howling piteously. 
[197] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

A derelict in mid-ocean is a melancholy 
sight. But O5 who can portray the tragic 
sadness, the immeasurable waste of a life 
that does not end in God, but drifts aim- 
lessly and uselessly on the shoreless sea of 
a godless and hopeless eternity! 



[198] 



A Man's Religion 

Everywhere and always men have been 
asking what they could do to be saved. 
The multiplied religions reveal the varied 
ways in which men have sought an answer 
to that question. The one pathetic and 
tragic cry which goes up from the heart 
of every earnest and honest soul is, '^What 
must I do to be saved?'' For every man 
needs a religion. I say every man needs a 
religion. Thoughtless and foolish men say 
that women and children may need religion, 
but that strong men have no such need. 
Their own inner consciousness gives the lie 
to such a statement. For if anybody in 
this world of struggle needs religion, it is 
the men who are in the thickest of the 
fight and most exposed to the enemy. 

Women and children can get along far 
better without religion than men. Only 
recall to your mind how many more men 
[199] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

than women are overthrown in the way. 
Our prisons are crowded with them. Few 
women are there. The churches are filled 
with women and the prisons with men — 
a most significant fact. If there were more 
men in church, there would be fewer men 
in jail. Women live more sheltered lives 
than men, and for that reason men need 
the divine help which God's grace affords. 
It is the man who thinks he is strong enough 
in his own strength who goes down before 
temptation. Will men never learn that 
no man is strong enough to fight a winning 
battle against the ^' world, the flesh, and 
the devil,'' unaided by a higher power.? 
All history, past and present, proves it. 

If men need religion so much in their 
daily life to enable them to overcome the 
evils which assail them, the very character 
of God requires that some provision must 
be made by God for such a need. A human 
need implies that God will furnish the sup- 
ply. Just as lungs imply air, and fins imply 
water, just so the soul's hunger implies 
that God has made provision for its satis- 
faction. [ 200 ] 



A MAN^S RELIGION 

There must be a religion for men. 
There must be a religion which just fits 
into the needs of men. What kind of a 
religion does a strong, virile, tempted, and 
sinning man need? The Philippian jailer 
wanted a religion which would save him; 
and that is just the kind of religion every 
other man needs. He does not want a re- 
ligion for mere ornament or pastime. He 
wants something which can grip his soul 
and save him. 

Now, what do we mean when we say a 
man wants to be saved? What does salva- 
tion mean? The quick and easy answer 
is: To be saved means being saved from 
losing the soul in hell forever; to be saved 
means going to heaven. Yes, it ought to 
do that much; but it involves something 
more immediate and practical here and 
now. Too long has salvation been re- 
garded as a sort of "fire insurance.'' Men 
have looked forward to a future salvation 
from a future punishment. Recently I 
heard a man try to tell a funny story which 
involved the notion that Christianity was 
[201] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

good for the next world, but that Free- 
masonry was a better thing for this world. 
He holds the old notion that religion is only 
needed when one comes to die. He libeled 
both Christianity and Freemasonry. He 
misconceived the functions of both. 

Salvation does not involve the future 
happiness of the soul, saving it from all 
the direful consequences of a sinful life. 
But it means far more than that. It must 
mean the saving of every part of a man 
from every evil thing, both for time and 
eternity. Religion is fully as much for 
this world as for the next. To be saved 
means to be saved here and now. 

For a religion to be a man's religion, it 
must have certain characteristics. I shall 
attempt to name them, and I want you men 
to follow me closely and note just at what 
point you feel we must part company. 
Mark the places where you differ from 
me. Let us see how long we can keep 
together in agreement. 

First, a man's religion must honor the 
body. The human body is the crowning 

[202] 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

cap-sheaf of God's creation and the temple 
of the Holy Ghost. Every true man must 
see that true religion will not pour con- 
tempt on the temple where a soul dwells. 
The degradation of the human body, as 
seen in the practices of heathen fakirs, 
will never appeal to intelligent men. To- 
day you can not make a man believe that 
sin lies in the flesh, and that to get rid of 
the sin you must punish the flesh. A 
man's religion must honor the human body 
and prohibit all things which will di- 
minish its efficiency, destroy its beauty, 
or lessen its power to afford pleasure to 
its occupant. 

A man's religion must satisfy the de- 
mands of the intellect. Any religion that 
puts an extinguisher on the intellect will 
be repudiated by the modern man. Those 
faiths which have come down from past 
ages, which once commanded the belief 
of men, and which will not stand the test 
of modern science, and which do not har- 
monize with well-known facts in present- 
day history, are doomed. The Oriental 
[203] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

religions are anachronisms and hence im- 
possibilities, incapable of belief by men 
who think and know. In the German 
language there is a word, untranslatable 
into English, which literally means "a 
collier's faith." By that is meant a sort of 
religion or belief which only an illiterate 
and untaught man can accept. Such a 
religion will not meet the needs of thinking 
men to-day. 

A man's religion will possess those 
qualities which, while they may not be 
wholly comprehended, will command the 
respect of the intellect. Standing in the 
presence of such a religion men must look 
up, even if in looking up they discover it 
to be so lofty and vast that it appears to 
be without a summit; and, looking to 
right and left, it appears to be without a 
horizon. A man's religion will have fiber 
and grip in it which will stagger and com- 
mand the strongest minds. 

A man's religion must meet the re- 
quirements of his spiritual nature. He 
knows he is under the condemnation of the 
[204] 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

divine law, for he has violated it. His 
religion must provide a pardon. He knows 
that sin has polluted his nature, and that 
he is dripping with iniquity. He needs no 
man to tell him that he is morally unclean. 
His religion must somehow make it pos- 
sible for him to become cleansed from his 
moral impurity. 

He has a deep-seated sense of his divine 
origin. He feels within that which hungers 
for the fellowship of the loftiest and best. 
He has an instinct for God. His religion 
must provide for divine communion. It 
must bring him into vital touch with God. 
Man in his finest moods is dissatisfied unless 
God comes to him. A man feels within 
him a longing for immortality. No man 
desires annihilation. He hates death. He 
would live forever. He believes he will, 
because he has an indwelling instinct that 
he can not die. He will not believe that 
any grave-digger can ever catch him. It 
may catch his body, but not him. 

This universal instinct of immortality 
— this inexplicable longing for immortality 
[205] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

— is the prophecy of eternal Hfe. Just as 
God made the wings of the eagle for sweep- 
ing the air in the lofty skies, just so has 
God made the soul for the larger and 
ampler regions beyond. As the eagle spreads 
his weak and untried wings, instinctively 
knowing there are far-stretching, airy spaces 
beyond the crag where the nest lies shel- 
tered, so the soul of man feels within him 
that he is doomed to live in larger and fairer 
worlds than this. Better than all philo- 
sophical and scientific argument for the 
immortality of the soul is the psychological 
argument — the souFs own sense of its 
eternity. A man's religion must thus rec- 
ognize this requirement of the soul, and 
provide a home adequate and ample for 
the souFs vast needs. Men must cast 
their ''sprigs of acacia '^ into the open 
grave and express their belief in the res- 
urrection of the body and immortality of 
the soul. 

A man's religion must afford a large 
fellowship with men of all creeds and 
climes. There once was a time when men 
[206] 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

could let themselves think that their nar- 
row creed encompassed only those who were 
saved out of the universal human wreck. 
Even to-day some belated folk think that 
only those who speak their shibboleths are 
going to heaven. Small souls, who put the 
whole emphasis upon some minor matter 
of '"^mint, anise, and cummin/' think that 
unless men accept their viewpoint, they 
are doomed. But men, broad-minded men, 
put the emphasis on the vital and funda- 
mental things. I can name on the fingers 
of one hand the great elemental doctrines 
of the Christian faith in which all Christians, 
of every faith and clime, believe, and which 
alone really mark the faith of Jesus Christ. 
A man's religion can not be a narrow, sec- 
tarian creed. Every broad-gauged man 
must have a religion which will enable him 
to say with Tennyson: 

"And yet, though all the world forsake. 
And fortune clip my wings, 
I will not cramp my heart and take 
Half views of men and things." 

[207] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

A man's religion must be pre-eminently 
practical and ethical. A mere other-world- 
liness spirit will not satisfy. His religion 
must give promise of eternal satisfaction, 
and he must have a hope that laughs at 
death and the grave; but his religion must 
bring to him something immediate and 
practical. Once men thought it was their 
duty to flee away from the world and save 
their souls. Now men know that they can 
not save their own souls unless they strive 
to save the world too. That was a most 
selfish and uncharitable religion which 
prompted Pilgrim to leave his family and 
friends and flee alone to the distant city 
where he might find life. To be sure, Bun- 
yan was picturing in "Pilgrim's Progress" 
the struggle of a soul away from his own 
sin and sinful surroundings, and was in no 
sense attempting to show the attitude 
Christianity should take toward an un- 
godly world. The modern Pilgrim ought 
to be so represented that it will appear that 
he is as much interested in the welfare of 
others as he is in his own. To be sure, 
[208] 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

religion is a very personal matter, and sal- 
vation must begin in each man's own life, 
but it will not end there. He first must 
have his own blind eyes opened, for the 
blind can not lead the blind. But when 
once he is saved, he realizes that he is only 
saved in order that he may save. Religion 
is a social matter. It is also intensely indi- 
vidualistic, for each must for himself get 
in right relation to God. It is tremendously 
social, and must reach out to uplift and 
exalt all the relations of life. Christian 
socialism is a matter upon which men 
differ, and for which you will get as many 
definitions as there will be men of whom 
you make the inquiry. But social Chris- 
tianity is another and more vital and more 
easily to be understood matter. '"No man 
liveth to himself.'' Hence a man's re- 
ligion will have in it those elements which 
adapt it to the needs of the present-day 
world. It will make a man a better man 
in all his human relations. It will make 
him a better father, husband, brother, 
citizen. One having the old exploded 
14 [ 209 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

notion that preaching the gospel means 
only telling men to get to heaven, will find 
fault with the man who puts emphasis on 
the importance of living right here and now 
among his fellow-men. A religion which 
will not have some moral effect on a man's 
voting is useless. A religion which will 
not make a man pay his honest debts is 
a mockery. A religion which does not 
make a man more lovable in his own home 
and win his own children to accept their 
father's faith is to be rejected. A religion 
which makes a man censorious and a judge 
of his fellow-men who, in their efforts to 
do good, may not adopt his plans, may 
have come out of hell, but never out of 
heaven. A religion which fails to teach 
a man his civic duty to his town and state 
and nation will never become a man's 
religion. 

A man's religion must be usable for 
'Hhe life that now is," as well as for that 
which is to come. A man's religion will 
make him live soberly, righteously, and 
godly in this present world. Any other 
[210] 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

kind of religion may do for anaemic old men 
who never did a man's work in the world, 
but will not grip a virile man who responds 
to the appeal for present-day, practical 
need. The practical and ethical features 
of a man's religion will appear in the fruit 
of good deeds. No mere theological creed, 
with its logical symbols of faith which seem 
to be guaranteed by certain obscure utter- 
ances of an apostle, whose sayings even his 
apostolic brothers admitted were some- 
what hard to be understood, can satisfy 
the practical man of to-day. I know a 
man with a perfect creed and a bad life. 
If his religion had the smallpox, his con- 
duct would never catch the disease. He 
thinks he is ^'spiritually-minded." Every- 
body knows he is carnally conducted. He 
does not get drunk, but he is full of envy. 
He does not steal, but he is censorious and 
critical of his fellow-men. His sins are not 
those which reveal themselves through the 
flesh, but rather through his little narrow 
and mean soul. He prays, but never gives. 
He can weep over described sorrow and 

[m] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

need, but no one ever knew him to go out 
and relieve it. You can stop his ecstacy 
with an appeal for help. He can never 
shout in the sight of a contribution plate. 

A man's religion requires him to be as 
good in his deeds as in his creed. It will 
ever keep before his vision the awful picture 
Jesus disclosed when He parted the veil 
one day just for a moment and let us see 
the set throne of the judgment, and on 
what principles rewards and punishment 
are meted out for eternity. 

A man's religion will have in it a regard 
for the needs of his brethren who live near 
at hand. No writing of a check can alone 
meet the need of personal help tendered the 
one who asks food and raiment. No sub- 
stitute can be sent with the cup of cold 
water, nor make a visit to the lonely and 
criminal. Such deeds can only be done by 
each man for himself. A man's religion will 
have no place in it for proxy voting, proxy 
giving, proxy visiting, proxy praying. It will 
require each man to give himself. Only 
when a man loses his own life can he save it. 
[ 212 ] 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

Whatever may have been the require- 
ments of a man's reHgion in the past, to- 
day nothing less than the plain religion 
of Jesus Christ will suflBce for men. His 
words must be stripped of all artificial in- 
terpretations and explanations, and taken 
for their face value. His precepts alone are 
to be regarded as the rule of our conduct. 
All ''traditions of the elders" must be cast 
aside as unauthoritative. His simple sac- 
raments must be restored in all their plain 
and easily-understood symbolism. All the 
accumulated tinsel and millinery must be 
torn off that we may by faith see in the 
simple elements the passion and love of 
our Lord for men. The religion of Jesus 
must be the religion of a man. 

Read your New Testament. Read the 
four Gospels, and read them in the light 
thrown on them by the epistles of the men 
who were Christ's intimate companions, 
and you will find that Christ's religion is 
a man's religion, because it knows the hu- 
man body, satisfies the demands of the 
intellect, meets the requirements of the 
[213] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

spiritual nature, affords a large fellowship 
with men of all creeds and claims, and is 
pre-eminently practical and ethical, fitted 
to the life which men are now living and 
fruitful in good deeds. 

I take this religion to be mine. I feel 
so assured that it is the true religion, that 
I dare stand at the bar of the last judgment 
and, in the presence of the assembled 
universe, give as my apology for having 
received it, and staking my soul's salvation 
upon it, the very reasons I have just given 
to you. It saves and satisfies me. I rec- 
ommend and offer it to you! 



[214] 



A Man's Eternity 

Jesus Christ boldly asserted that He gives 
to men eternal life. He brought life and 
immortality. Eternal life is the gift of 
God. The whole teaching of Scripture 
points to the immortality of the human 
soul. We are not taught that all men shall 
enter into eternal life. Some shall enter 
into eternal death, whatever that may 
mean. Jesus said: "He that believeth on 
the Son hath everlasting life, and he that 
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but 
the wrath of God abideth on him.'' He 
said in His prayer to the Father: "This is 
eternal life, that they might know Thee, 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
Thou hast sent." 

Paul says: "The wages of sin is death; 
but the gift of God is eternal life through 

[215] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

Jesus Christ our Lord/' Jesus describes 
the scene at the final judgment, in which 
He reports the Judge as saying: "These 
shall go away into everlasting punishment, 
but the righteous into life eternal/' 

Beyond what is recorded in Scripture, 
we may not now know just what is implied 
either in "eternal death,'' or "eternal life," 
The good and bad are both immortaL We 
can not die. We are bound for eternity. 
In that future state are the good and bad, 
as they are found also here in this present 
life. Just as we choose here and now to be 
good or bad, so will it be there. We choose 
our future as we choose our present. We 
decide now what our present character 
shall be. There is no evidence in nature, 
reason, or the Bible that leads us to con- 
clude that they who are bad here from 
choice will be good there, nor that they who 
are good here will be bad there. The same 
law runs right on up out of time into 
eternity. We ourselves fix our eternity. 
We may choose eternal death. We may 
choose eternal life. We are plainly taught 
[ 216 ] 



A MAN^S ETERNITY 

that eternal life is the gift of God through 
Jesus Christ. "He that hath the Son hath 
everlasting life/' If we would possess 
eternal life we must possess Jesus Christ. 
The character of our eternity hinges upon 
our relation to Jesus Christ. That is the 
plain teaching of the New Testament. The 
good and bad alike are not annihilated at 
death. The body disintegrates like any 
other physical thing; but the soul lives on. 
Doctor Thompson, in ''Brain and Person- 
ality/' has scientifically demonstrated that 
the mind can act, and does, independently 
of the brain. When that is proved, you 
have proved the separate existence of the 
mind from the body, and you have demon- 
strated the immortality of the soul. 

To one standing on the shore and watch- 
ing a ship going out to sea, it appears at 
last that the ship is going down below the 
sky-line. Finally he says, "She is gone." 
But another watcher, seeing the ship com- 
ing up above the sky-line, says, "She is 
coming.'' It is like that with the dead. 
We watch the dying, and at last cry, "He 
[217] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

is gone/' Over on the other side they see 
him rise from his dead body, and they cry, 
*'He is come!'' 

Every man has an eternity. He may 
decide what kind. God has created men 
whose very worth proves their eternity. 
Try and think for a moment what God has 
done for man. He has not only given him 
the most perfect of physical bodies in which 
to live, but contemplate what provision 
God has made for that body. 

We are just beginning to discover some 
of the riches God has laid up in this world 
for the uses of our physical bodies. We are 
appalled at the resources of nature. These 
all but inj&nite treasures have been stored 
up here for our use. We are told that all 
things here are made for man. When we 
begin to realize this world and, indeed, the 
visible universe about and above us, as a 
school in which our minds may be instructed 
we are even more astonished at the vast 
intellectual resources God has provided for 
our intellectual growth. We are discover- 
ing that the book of nature is only the phys- 

[218] 



^ 



A MAN'S ETERNITY 

ical incarnation of the Divine mind, which 
we are to read and understand. Our minds 
grow big Hke God's as we read His thoughts 
after Him as He has crystaUized them in 
snowflakes or blazed them in stars. 

When we come within the realm of our 
aflectional and spiritual nature, we see even 
more clearly what estimate God puts upon 
man's worth. For here we see the price 
He pays for the redemption of a soul that 
is lost in sin. The great heart of God 
yearns over fallen humanity. He broods 
over His sinful children. He gives Himself 
to die for them. The unspeakable gift of \ 
His Son proclaims the unmeasurable love 
of God for man. The tremendous tragedy 
of Calvary reveals the estimate God puts 
on a human soul. When any serious mind 
contemplates what values have been ex- 
pended on humanity, he can not fail to be 
horrijfied when it is suggested that all has 
been spent on a being that lives but for a 
brief period, and then vanishes into nothing- 
ness, like a candle flame blown out. I 
would dare charge God with outrageous 
[219] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

waste if He has spent all this on mere 
mortality. I am convinced that not only 
does man's great worth prove his im- 
mortality and his capacity for eternal life, 
but the universal human instinct for im- 
mortality proves that he will live forever. 
So all wise men will provide for eternity. 
What would you think of a man who knew 
he must some day take a long journey into 
some far-away country, and would never 
come back; who knows he is to leave every- 
thing behind him; who knows he must fit 
himself for the new country of which he is 
to become a citizen? He is sure he must 
take that journey, but he is not sure when 
he must begin it. It may be to-day he 
must drop all and start. Any moment the 
most important things of his life may be 
dropped forever. His business is to be 
arranged. His friends must be seen. Im- 
portant letters must be written. His ticket 
must be bought. His home in the new 
land must be chosen. Yet he has not yet 
done one thing to get ready. 

i^The most diflScult task of the materialist 

\ [ 220 ] 



A MAN'S ETERNITY 

is to account for the universal belief in the 
soul's immortality. Without any possi- 
bility of collusion, with no opportunity for 
comparison of opinions, peoples widely sep- 
arated by time and distance have agreed in 
their belief that the soul lives after the 
body dies. Not only the favored few who 
were especially gifted in mind and heart, 
but the universal many who have lived on 
the low mental levels have clung to the 
belief that they would live again. All feel 
what Victor Hugo expressed: "'When I 
go down to the grave I can say that I have 
finished my day's work, but I can not say 
I have finished my life. My day's work 
will begin the next morning. The tomb is 
not a blind alley. It is a thoroughfare. It 
closes in the twilight to open in the dawn. 
The thirst for the infinite proves infinity." 
All humanity everywhere feels the pull 
and tug of eternity. A drowning man 
throws up his hands to grasp something 
above him. It is thus with our souls. We 
reach up to grasp eternity. We feel the 
instability of this life. We reach after the 

[221] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

eternal. The very tug of the eternal upon 
our souls proves that somewhere there is an 
eternal world which is calling us. In 1845 
Leverrier noted marked disturbances in the 
movements of the planet Uranus. He could 
only account for them on the theory that 
somewhere there was a vaster planet in 
the solar system whose presence alone 
could account for the disturbances. He 
calculated that if his theory were correct, 
then at a given time in a given place a 
great telescope, if pointed in the right di- 
rection, would disclose the presence of such 
a planet- He communicated with an astron- 
omer in Berlin, and told him when and 
where to look. The astronomer pointed 
his telescope as directed, and there, far 
away in the outer depths, he saw for the 
first time the blazing planet of Neptune. 
So it seems that we may guess that heaven 
lies off there somewhere, though our eyes 
may not now behold it, except through the 
telescope of faith, pulling and tugging at 
our hearts. Like a boy flying his kite at 
night, may not see the kite, but knows by 

[222] 



A MAN'S ETERNITY 

the pull on the string that the kite is still 
above him, so may we know by the pull, 
that heaven and eternity are there, though 
yet out of sight. 

If a man were going only to New York 
to-morrow night, he would engage his berth 
in the sleeper; yet he may have not even 
given one serious thought about that long 
journey on which he may start to-day and 
never return. Can you imagine a man so 
great a fool? 

Yet you may be that man or woman. 
You may die before morning, and yet you 
are wholly unprepared. You are spending 
all your time on things which are not 
essential to your eternal prosperity. The 
things you think most of now will be as 
valueless to you as last year's birds' nests 
one second after your soul is launched into 
eternity. 

You may have spent all your life get- 
ting some fine mansion ready for your old 
age, and before you set foot in it may be 
called into an eternity for which you 
have made no preparation, and may have 
[ 223 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

to spend the unending eons in a starless, 
hopeless, and Godless night. 

What would you think of a messenger 
who was carrying a jewel in a casket to a 
king, and who gave so much thought to the 
casket that he carelessly dropped the jewel 
and had only an empty casket to show for 
all his pains? Are you not in danger of a 
like folly? Are you giving more thought 
to the casket of your body than to the 
jewel of your soul? What shall it profit 
you if you gain the whole world and lose 
your own soul? 

When your body falls in death, your 
soul survives. What are you doing for it? 
God recognizes its value, and has paid the 
greatest possible price for its salvation. 
He has gone to His limit for your soul. How 
far have you gone? He has opened the 
way for your eternal salvation. Will you 
accept the proffer? He has given you 
Christ. Will you take Him, and, with Him, 
receive eternal life? 

Jesus said, ''I go to prepare a place for 
you, that where I am ye may be also." 
[224] 



A MAN'S ETERNITY 

Heaven is there. It may be had for the 
asking. The place is there for you, already 
prepared. Will you occupy it.^^ What can 
I say to prove the folly of the man who 
has a fortune within his reach and will not 
grasp it.^ How may I show the insanity of 
the man who can have heaven for the ask- 
ing, and yet who prefers, by neglecting or 
refusing, to make his bed in hell.? 

When I was living in Ohio a few years 
ago, there occurred a peculiar incident at 
West Farmington, Ohio. The Commence- 
ment exercises of the high school and a 
funeral were held in the same church the 
same afternoon, the funeral at 1 o'clock, 
and the graduating exercises at 2.30 o'clock. 
The class had decorated the church previous 
to the arrival of the funeral party, so that 
the Commencement exercises could begin 
immediately following the funeral services. 
The class motto was suspended above the 
chancel, and not covered up for the funeral. 
Upon the arrival of the casket, it was 
placed directly under the motto, ''Launched, 
but Whither Bound?'' The effect was 
15 [ 225 ] 



THE WAY OF A MAN 

startling. It is so with every soul at death. 
It is launched, but whither is it bound? 
You, too, some day will start on that 
long journey. Where will you spend eter- 
nity? 



226] 



OCT 11 1912 



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